How does someone like Bryan Kohlberger manager to earn further degrees given his known unsocialible behavior? If fellow students knew about his behavior, so did the faculty. Typically when BA students apply for a Master’s program, they are vetted by department faculty not just for their grades but also their personality. Perhaps university promotion systems vary from college to college. Shouldn’t his behavior have been flagged early on?
There are plenty of colleges and universities where the entrance exam is “Can you sign your name?” “Do it on a check”.
I don’t know that this is typical, no matter what school and what program - the fact that a private university with a small number of openings in their physics doctoral program might interview candidates and vet them based on their personality doesn’t mean that a large public university won’t admit students to a master’s program in psychology based on their grades and test scores.
High-functioning sociopaths are adept at fooling people.
In our social circle there are two “kids” from two different families that are in PhD programs at elite universities that 30 years ago would not have made it through the selection process at the school I was at.
One is an extreme version of Sheldon Cooper. Incredibly self-centered, insults everyone constantly, needs everything to be exactly on schedule and in place.
The other is pretty much non-verbal. Can order food in a fast food restaurant if he absolutely has to, but will go to great lengths not to speak to anyone. He does speak to his dog and his mother quite normally.
Don’t know what the specific diagnoses are, but both made it through undergrad by demanding and getting accommodations for their conditions that would never have happened in the 1980s and 90s unless they had a physical disability.
The nonverbal guy for example does not have to make presentations or participate in class discussions. Obviously he couldn’t take classes where class discussions are absolutely central to the course.
The other chap is a one man wrecking crew for the school’s Women in STEM efforts as he is particularly hostile to them. But his parents very aggressively demand accommodations. Doesn’t help that his father is a misogynistic asshole who, for example, believes women have no business playing chess, never mind working with particle accelerators. Delicate balancing act for the school I imagine.
Both are very, very good at math and physics and slid right from undergrad into PhD programs. Perfect SAT scores. Very high GRE scores.
Unless someone exhibits clearly psychopathic behavior, it would be difficult to interview someone in order to determine whether or not they are someday going to murder four innocent students.
As previously mentioned, people like Bryan are skilled at presenting whatever persona they want in order to achieve their aims. My guess is he wanted to show how smart he was and how inept the local police were. He nearly pulled off the perfect crime.
What behavior are we talking about here? Can you provide some examples of his reported behavior prior to these murders - was something reported about it? Just want to make sure we are all on the same page.
Just as a point of comparison, Ted Kaczynski (aka Unabomber) was accepted into grad school at both Cal Berkeley and the University of Chicago before enrolling at Michigan. After he received his PhD he was hired for a tenure track post at Berkeley.
I was admitted to a doctoral psychology program at Harvard with no interview. Fortunately, I have a scintillating personality.
From the grad school students I’ve known and seen, “unsociable” is not at all a disqualifying trait. I don’t mean that in a bad way – some folks just bury themselves in their academics and work. Nothing wrong with that.
In my experience, if weird anti-social behavior was a bar from pursuing a post graduate degree, there would be very few post graduate degrees issued.
I don’t know the details in this case but I assume it probably went beyond your usual academia weirdness, but that may only be obvious in retrospect.
They manage not to set off any red flags during interviews?
A counterexample is the Aurora shooter, James Holmes, who apparently creeped out his interviewers at the U of Iowa:
James Holmes rejected
I am still tangentially involved in academia by marriage - my wife has tales of bad applicants where there is nothing obvious on the ‘permanent record’, but phone calls get made to/from colleagues, off the record, warning of potential problems. Off the record because problem people tend to be litigious. What’s worse is when a message from someone in the know at another institution saying ‘X is a problem that you don’t want’ gets ignored in favor of filling a slot post-haste, or for someone who can be charming in a daylong interview with the ‘right’ interviewer. I recall someone in my own residency who transferred in to fill an opening - I suspect that the previous institution was eager to be rid of them with a minimum of fuss and wasn’t going to poison the deal in any way.
When I chaired my department’s grad school admissions committee, we never asked about someone’s personality and we didn’t interview applicants. Admission was based on marks and recommendations. I suppose a recommendation might raise a red flag, but I don’t recall any incident like that.
When I was applying to grad school my department didn’t do interviews, but recruitment visits. “We like you a lot based on your scores and a phone call, please visit so we can convince you to attend our program.”
I can’t remember if it was the year I was recruited, or the following year or two, one of the already accepted applicants, after the days’ activities were over, showed up at one of the female graduate student’s homes. Unannounced, uninvited, and with nobody sure how he got the address. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was enough to send up creepy stalker flags in the early 90s.
The administration had a very difficult time trying to figure out how to convince the guy to not come, because they’d already given him a written offer letter. I think funding “dried up”.
Anyway, that incident was bad enough to convince the department to switch from recruitment visits for already accepted applicants, to interview visits for the top choices. I’m not sure if there were any cases where an offer was not extended to somebody who looked good on paper, but “failed” the interview.
A flip side of this is if an applicant can hold it together and behave non-scary for 1.5 days, then they can be accepted and into the program before problematic behavior is revealed.
These guys sound like the 2020s version of Ted Kaczynski!
The Aurora theater shooter (I know his name but won’t use it here) applied for a master’s program at my alma mater, with something like a 3.8GPA, but upon the interview, the committee’s unanimous decision was “Do not admit this man under any circumstances.” Of course, this was not revealed in those exact words until after the shooting; he simply got a letter that said something like “You aren’t a good fit for our program.”
IDK all the details but one of my HS classmates was pre-emptively accepted by two medical schools based on his GPA, and denied admittance after his interview. While I don’t think this guy is a sociopath, he wasn’t MD or DO material personality-wise. I heard later that he, like most people who are not admitted to medical school, felt it was for the best in the long run (no disrespect meant to any doctor who may read this!).
ETA: Hadn’t read the whole thread first.
People who worked and went to school with him have come forward and said they knew something was “off” about him but couldn’t exactly define it, and he also has a history of heroin addiction, or at least use. That doesn’t just come out of thin air, either.
Yeah, right. Is there any record of them making any statements before he was accused of the murders?
Why would there be a record of that? Do most ordinary people make official records of their thoughts on people that they’ve met?
Charitably, when something like this happens, journalists chasing stories are going to find people who say things like this. It’s sort of a pre-written narrative that gets dusted off and printed. If, instead, the “off” kid ends up creating a billion-dollar app, then the narrative is that there was always something “different” about him!
So, yeah, they saw something “off” about him, he was a bit of a “weirdo”, to use an older term. But in academic science circles, isn’t that somewhat the norm? 
In 1975, I was admitted to graduate school (and given a large stipend) at a university in Chicago without even applying. Quite frankly, I had no intention of going to grad school. I had published an article based on my undergrad research and the head of the department called me up to ask what my post-graduate plans were. He offered me a graduate student slot. I hesitated for a couple days. He called me back and upped the stipend. Later, I received a letter of offer and a generic enrollment form. That was it.