The Class of 2023 is Marist’s Biggest and Most Diverse Yet

The demographics of this year’s freshman class have made history

Marist welcomed the class of 2023 as its largest and most diverse group in the history of the College. 

A total of 1,389 first-year students entered Marist campuses this fall between Manhattan, Florence, Dublin. The Poughkeepsie main campus welcomed 1,262 students, and out of those, 71 are commuters. A total of 36 first-year students began classes at Marist’s Florence campus and 20 began in Dublin.

A record-breaking 26.6 percent of the freshmen identify as people of color.

Marist holds a total student population of 6,657, made up of 5,037 traditional undergraduates and 958 full-and part-time graduate students. The student body currently contains 58 percent of students who identify as female and 42 percent of students who identify as male.

According to the College’s Undergraduate Student Body Demographic Factbook, published by the Institutional Research and Planning office, in 2018, the freshman class was made up of 76 percent students who identified as White. In the past five years, over 70 percent of the College’s student body has been made up of students from the tri-state area.

However, a slight but consistent increase has been reported in recent years, as in 2014, the freshman class held 21.5 percent of students identifying as Non-White. By 2016, the population of Non-White students in that freshman class increased to 22.4 percent, and in 2018, it increased to 23.3 percent.

According to the Marist news website, the freshman class represents 32 states in the U.S. Nearly four percent of the class are international students from 26 countries, including: Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestinian Territory, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Singapore, Somalia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Republic of Tanzania.

The class of 2023 also holds four students who were named valedictorians and two who were salutatorians.

According to a March 2019 Marist Circle investigation by Hannah Kirk, the renovation of Steel Plant Studios could be a sizable catalyst of this demographic shift. 

Along with the renovation of the Steel Plant, Marist has seen immense increase in credibility and success of their art and fashion programs. Over the summer, publication Business of Fashion ranked Marist’s Fashion Program in its annual Global Fashion School Ranking of top college fashion programs in the world — #38 globally and #11 in the United States. This put the College on a playing field amongst world-renowned fashion schools including the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design. 

Therefore, the influx of art and fashion student applications can draw from a wider socioeconomic and geographic pool of first-year students. 
“We are incredibly excited to welcome the class of 2023 to Marist,” said Associate Vice President and Dean of Undergraduate Admission Kent Rinehart to the Marist news website. “Here we have a class with deep intellectual curiosity. They have shown leadership in and outside of the classroom, and demonstrated a sincere interest in helping the community around them and the world at large.”