The University of Iowa rejected a 2011 application by suspected theater shooter James Holmes, saying “Do NOT offer admission under any circumstances,” according to documents obtained Thursday by The Denver Post.

Two of the Iowa officials looking through the applications agreed not to make an offer to Holmes, though their reasoning is unclear.

On Jan. 30, 2011, Daniel Tranel, apparently on the admissions committee, sent an email about seven “applicants from this past weekend.” The names of the other students were blacked out. Of the seven, only Holmes was dismissed as an applicant. The others generated comments such as “stellar” or “solid, not spectacular.”

Mark Blumberg, also apparently on the committee, returned an email, saying, “James Holmes: I agree with Dan. Don’t admit.”

Neither Tranel nor Blumberg returned calls seeking elaboration, but university spokesman Tom Moore said the decision was made after Holmes interviewed for a position in the graduate program.

“It’s very much a process of trying to determine if the person is a good fit,” Moore said. “He just simply was not a good personal fit for our program and that’s all we are comfortable with saying.”

The documents released after a formal records request include an essay that Holmes, a graduate of the University of California at Riverside, apparently wrote to explain why he sought a graduate degree in neuroscience.

He wrote that he had chosen to pursue a life of learning, focusing on the way memory works.

Holmes wrote that he has “always been fascinated by the complexities of long lost thought seemingly arising out of nowhere into a stream of awareness. These fascinations likely stemmed from my interest in puzzles and paradoxes as an adolescent and continued through my curiosity in academic research.”

He detailed a time that he was a camp counselor, working with kids ages 10 to 11. He noted that two of the 12 children had attention deficit disorder, and another child had schizophrenia. One night that child awoke at 3:30 a.m. and began vacuuming the ceiling of the cabin.

“These kids were heavily medicated, but this did not solve their problems,” he wrote. “The medication changed them from being highly energetic creative kids to lax beings who slept through the activities.”

In a letter of recommendation from an unidentified official at Riverside, Holmes was described as “truly exceptional.”

Other documents showed his grade point average from Riverside was 3.9. He also said that he was applying at Texas A&M, University of Michigan, University of Alabama, University of Colorado and Kansas University. He doesn’t mention the University of Illinois.

Holmes did submit an application to the University of Illinois. In contrast to the response from Iowa, Illinois offered Holmes a position in their neuroscience program. Holmes rejected that offer to attend the University of Colorado Denver.

Holmes, 24, is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 58 others in a midnight shooting on July 20 inside a movie theater in Aurora.

Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367, jpmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jpmeyerdpost