The daughter of an Episcopal minister, Arlin came to Ithaca at the urging of several alumni who taught in the Utica area, where she grew up. It was an exciting period of growth for the College. Music, physical education, and physiotherapy still dominated the curriculum, but there was movement toward an equal division between the professional schools and the humanities.

"Mary was always an excellent student, always," says Craig McHenry ’30, Mus.B. ’39, M.S. ’46, , who was dean of the School of Music at the time. "She’s a super-conscientious person."

McHenry remembers when Arlin came to Ithaca as a music education major highly recommended by some of his former students. She was a "very confident" musician who played viola in the orchestra under McHenry’s direction. With a minor in French horn, she also performed with the concert band. As an undergraduate she was a member of Sigma Alpha Iota, the international music society for women. That affiliation continues today: she is faculty adviser for the Ithaca College chapter and contributes to the society’s quarterly magazine, Pan Pipes.

By the early 1960s, when Arlin was completing her undergraduate work, construction of the South Hill campus was under way. A triangular bus system ran from downtown to South Hill to Quarry Street, where former county hospital buildings were being used as dormitories and science laboratories. Arlin’s work as a music student kept her mainly at the downtown campus, however, since the concert hall was in what is now the Greek Orthodox Church.

Upon graduating in 1961, Arlin attended the University of Indiana at Bloomington, where she earned her master’s degree in 1965, was a teaching assistant until 1966, and earned her Ph.D. in 1972 after several years spent working toward it during her summer breaks from IC. Assistant provost and dean of graduate studies Garry Brodhead was a graduate student at Indiana with Arlin and says the two became fast friends. "She’s always been just the way you see her here — serious in purpose and dedicated," Brodhead remembers of their student days. "Not that she can’t have a good time, but she’s a pretty focused individual. She has always been very dedicated to the discipline of music theory and she was a highly respected student."