 The tuition-based academic program included strict entrance exams and admission requirements under which potential student applicants were carefully scrutinized.Many students traveled from considerable distances, not only from Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park but also suburbs including Ferndale, Grosse Pointe, and Livonia.Although the student body was predominantly white for many years, the social changes of the late 1950s and early 1960s began to bring about the enrollment of a small number of students of color.