By January 1961, these six had all finished parachute and recovery training, as well as three-day regimes in simulators. On January 17, the six participated in their final exams, including time spent in a simulator, and a written test. Based on these results, a commission, supervised by Kamanin, recommended the use of the cosmonauts in the following order: Gagarin, Titov, Nelyubov, Nikolayev, Bykovskiy, Popovich. At this stage Gagarin was the clear favorite to be the first man in space, not only based on the exams, but also among an informal peer evaluation.