"You're from where?": A look at the amount of students at Iona from outside of the tristate area

While Iona senior Phillip Wachowski was growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois, he decided to compete on his high school’s water polo team after swimming competitively since elementary school. As a high school senior, he began looking at smaller colleges that had good business schools and water polo teams. When Wachowski started looking at Northeast schools, Iona alumni who lived in his hometown and had played on the college’s water polo team put him in touch with the coach at Iona.

“Through the alumni, they basically said that I would get a chance to play here and it would be a good experience, [because] they had fun,” Wachowski said.

Wachowski is one of the 93 student athletes who currently play for an Iona Division 1 sports teams who comes from out-of-state. About 300 of the total first-time, degree-seeking undergraduate students at Iona for the past four completed academic years came from a state outside of the tristate area. Out of these students, over 40 percent of them were students involved in Iona’s Division 1 athletics program.

Below: The amount of Iona athletes from outside of the tristate area, from 2014 to 2017

16 of the 17 Division I sports teams at Iona – every team except for women’s rowing – currently have at least one student who’s from outside the tristate area. Brother Jason Ford, assistant director for undergraduate admissions, believes that the main reasons student athletes out of state come to Iona is the scholarships that Iona offers as well as the quality of the school’s athletic programs.

“When the parents see that there is not a major impact on their wallet, and that you [the student] will be happy there, that helps a lot,” Ford said.

Wachowski says New York’s vibe was one of the aspects that drew him to Iona.

“I liked the get-up-and go, quick mentality – or the business mentality – of New York,” Wachowski said. “[Iona] was kind of the middle ground, that there’s a city feel, yet it’s far enough away.”

Marnie Skinner, a junior from Washington on Iona’s softball team, said that she was looking for colleges that checked certain boxes she was looking for in a school.

“A lot was based on playing softball,” Skinner said. “I was looking at a lot of different schools that were matching the level of softball that I was at, but also had good science programs.”

Skinner then decided to commit to Iona her senior year, when she met the Iona softball coach at the time at a tournament in California.

Ford believes that students from outside the tristate area as a whole are drawn to Iona because of the community feel and opportunities that Iona’s location offers for students of different majors.

“Especially, I think with Mass Comm and Business, it’s like ‘wow, I can live in a suburb community of New York City, take my classes four days a week, have an internship one day a week,’ and that really helps [recruit out-of-state students],” Ford said.

That said, in the past four completed academic years, the amount of total first-time, degree-seeking undergraduate students at Iona who are from outside the tristate area has decreased by a little over 21 percent, while the number of total first-year undergrads has increased by about 10 percent. Ford thinks this decrease in out-of-state students is due to the number of people they have on staff and the amount of time they have to visit places to recruit.

“In some way, looking at having a bigger team approach to recruit [will help], whether it’s literally adding more employees or getting people who will do it as regional rep or alumni rep,” Ford said.

About 9 percent of the first-year undergraduate students at Iona from the last four years are from outside of the tristate area. Iona has the lowest percentage of out-of-state first-year undergraduate students to total first-year undergraduate students for the last four academic years, when compared to ten other colleges and universities in the surrounding area.

For instance, Iona’s amount of first-year undergrads from outside of the tristate area is 45 percent and 75 percent lower than at Manhattanville and Concordia respectively, two of the other private, liberal arts colleges located in Westchester County. More dramatically, about 68 percent of the first-year students at Sarah Lawrence College – another private, liberal arts college in Westchester County – are from outside the tristate area.

Iona’s amount of out-of-state first-year students is also at least 100 percent lower than some of the larger universities in the area. In regards to first-year undergrads, about 37 percent at Fordham, 18 percent at the University of Connecticut and at least half from Columbia and New York University are from outside of the tristate area.

Ford attributes the larger amounts of first-time, degree-seeking undergrads at larger schools to their reputation, but believes that Iona shouldn’t be as low compared to similar schools.

“I think if we are looking at a similar type school to Iona College, and they have a larger population, that’s an area we should be looking to grow in and at least meet the market numbers,” Ford said. “We should be saying, ‘if they are able to do it, and they are a very similar type institution, we should be doing that too.’”

“On a strategic level, there has been a little more of a push recently to make sure we branch out and look for ways to be present,” Ford continued. “I know that there have been some conversations that have happened with some of the people on campus with athletics and alumni, so hopefully those are good steps that we can build on.”