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Rejection, real and imagined, became an early theme of Seung-Hui Cho's life and might have helped precipitate his psychological unraveling during Cho's final years at Virginia Tech.

A review panel report released late Wednesday reiterated details -- and provided some new ones -- about Cho's widely reported reputation for withdrawal, troubled silence and dark writings in school settings.

Fresh revelations included:

• Cho was obsessed with the Columbine High School killers.
• Cho's parents and advisers warned him not to attend Tech.
• Cho's parents visited him often at Tech.
• Cho pitched a book proposal to a publishing firm but it was rejected.

The new details in the report about Cho and his path toward mass murder provide additional evidence of a life little favored by fate, as well as insights into the psyche of a young man who blamed the world for his inadequacies and isolation.

Panel report appendices include a theoretical profile of Cho written by Roger Depue, a forensic behavioral scientist and former FBI profiler. It portrays a young man whose murderous rage may have been driven by deep-seated, long-festering resentment for others he considered better equipped for personal and professional success. Thwarted literary ambitions and associated rejections seemingly dashed Cho's dreams, deepened his despair and fed his rage, proposed Depue.

Cho's distorted belief that life had unfairly singled him out for torment was exacerbated by an awareness of his own social failings and other inadequacies when surrounded by high achievers, wrote Depue. Such feelings dovetailed with unfulfilled needs for attention and adulation and might have propelled Cho to seek the kind of irrational payback and subsequent national notoriety achieved by earlier school shooters, Depue said.

A story Cho wrote in spring 2006 for Prof. Bob Hicok's class eerily foreshadowed April 16, 2007. It describes a self-professed loser "who can't do anything" plotting to kill students who seem not to share his miseries.

Katherine Newman, a professor at Princeton University and an expert on school shootings, told The Roanoke Times in May that Cho shared many of the experiences and characteristics of school shooters. Most such shooters have been bullied or teased, she said, and Cho suffered both, according to school classmates.

The panel's report notes that Cho became obsessed in April 1999 with Columbine killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Some believe Cho might have selected the week of April 2007 for the shootings because it shared Columbine's anniversary.

Cho was in eighth grade when Klebold and Harris killed 13 people and wounded 23 others before killing themselves.

A paper Cho wrote soon after in an English class "drew quick reaction from his teacher" because it expressed thoughts of suicide and homicide, the report reveals. In June 1999, a psychiatric evaluation diagnosed Cho with "selective mutism," a rare anxiety disorder, and major depression. Cho seemed to respond to a prescribed antidepressant, which was discontinued in 2000.

As a student in the huge public school system of Fairfax County, Cho encountered ever increasing enrollments as he progressed through the grades. But when he graduated from Westfield High School in 2003, Cho ignored his parents and counselors and enrolled at Virginia Tech, a large state university. In April 2007, student enrollment at Virginia Tech was more than 26,000.

Still, according to the panel's report, Cho's freshman year went comparatively smoothly. His parents visited Cho every Sunday during the first semester. "It seemed as though college was working out for him because he seemed excited about it," the report observed. (When the fall semester of 2005 began, however, John Eide, Cho's roommate, told suite mate Andy Koch that he saw Cho and his family arrive at Virginia Tech. "John said [Cho] got dropped off and there wasn't even a hug goodbye," said Koch.)

Earlier, Cho had decided to switch his major to English and writing seemed to become his passion. But Cho's excitement quickly collided with rejection. In one of his first English classes, Cho received a D. His sister, Sun Kyung Cho, subsequently found a rejection letter to her brother from a New York publishing house, to which Cho had pitched a book proposal.

When professors and students began to recoil because of Cho's violent writings and bizarre behavior, Cho's dream of being a great writer "was slipping away," observed Depue.

"These rejections were devastating to him and he fantasized about getting revenge from a world he perceived as rejecting him, people who had not satisfied so many of his powerful needs," Depue wrote.