of . Cooper was the lightest, at , while Glenn was at the maximum weight of , and Schirra was slightly overweight at , and had to lose weight to be accepted. Both had to watch their weight carefully while they were in the space program. IQs ranged from 135 to 147. All seven had attended post-secondary institutions in the 1940s. Of the five astronauts who had completed undergraduate degrees before being selected, two (Shepard and Schirra) were graduates of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1944 and 1945, respectively. Following a decade of intermittent studies, Cooper completed his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1956. Grissom earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1950, and a second bachelor's degree, in aeromechanics, from the AFIT in 1956. Slayton graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1949. Average flying hours were 3,500, of which 1,700 was in jets. Most were fighter pilots except Carpenter, who flew multi-engine patrol planes for most of his career. Glenn and Carpenter did not meet all of their schools' degree requirements; Glenn had not completed his senior year in residence or his final proficiency exam, and Carpenter had not finished his final course in heat transfer. Both were admitted on the basis of professional equivalency, and were ultimately awarded their bachelor's degrees after their 1962 space flights—Glenn in engineering from Muskingum College and Carpenter in aeronautical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Despite the extensive physical examinations, Slayton had an undiagnosed atrial fibrillation, which resulted in his grounding two months prior to what would have been his first space flight, and the second orbital mission. NASA introduction NASA introduced the astronauts in Washington, DC, on April 9, 1959. Although the agency viewed Project Mercury's purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the seven men immediately became national heroes and were compared by Time magazine to "Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers". Two hundred reporters overflowed the room used for the announcement and alarmed the astronauts, who were unused to such a large audience. Because they wore civilian clothes, the audience did not see them as military test pilots but "mature, middle-class Americans, average in height and visage, family men all". To the astronauts' surprise, the