Praveen Narayanan is the classic "undeclared" freshman, dabbling in various interests this semester: physics, music, astronomy and filmmaking. That freedom is a big reason why he decided to attend college in the United States, and Cornell in particular, rather than near his home in New Delhi.

"I was undecided with what I wanted to do," Narayanan said. "Back in India, you have to be sure." Two years to figure it out, he said, is a luxury he would not have had in India, where students enter college already having chosen a major.

A freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, Narayanan is one of roughly 400 students from India at Cornell. His decision to attend Cornell was motivated in part by the university's reputation and its many fields of study, but in larger part because he was one of a handful of students who received international scholarship aid from Cornell to help his family pay the tuition bills. Now, with the announcement of a $25 million educational endowment to Cornell (part of a $50 million gift from the Tata Education and Development Trust), more students like Narayanan soon will be able to come to Ithaca, regardless of their financial circumstances.

The gift from the Tata Education and Development Trust, announced Oct. 17, will support students from India and could eventually support up to 25 Tata scholars a year.

Illika Sahu '12, an Indian citizen who has spent most of her life in Dubai, is also enjoying the freedom of taking courses outside her major of city and regional planning in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

"When I applied here, I was slightly undecided; I suppose there are a lot of things that interest me," she said. "The good thing about city and regional planning is that the coursework is highly interdisciplinary, so I can take lots of prerequisites in many different subject areas. And they've got a whole bunch of electives."

She chose Cornell for a lot of the same reasons Narayanan did -- its reputation and its willingness to cater to a "slightly undecided" freshman.

"I'm amazed at how things are done here and how different the education system is here compared to what I'm used to," Sahu said.

Like most international students at Cornell, Sahu does not receive financial aid, but tuition bills are expensive, she said, and some help would have been greatly appreciated.

Annual scholarship aid at Cornell for international students tops out at about $1.5 million, which severely limits the number of foreign students (outside of Canada and Mexico) who can attend. An "extremely smart" friend of Sahu's from home, for example, was accepted at Cornell, but could not come because he couldn't get aid.

"That seems like a waste of a person who could have been an asset to Cornell," Sahu said.

While Narayanan and Sahu are just beginning their tenures at Cornell, Manu Suri's is coming to a close. A native of New Delhi who is a senior majoring in electrical and computer engineering, Suri transferred to Cornell after two years at Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Dubai.

Interested in solid-state devices and semiconductor physics, Suri works in assistant professor Julia Thom's physics lab. He was recently awarded a stipend from Cornell's Engineering Learning Initiatives to help him continue his research -- one of many doors that have opened for Suri that he would never have encountered in India, he said.

"Cornell has so much opportunity at every level, which you can't expect anywhere else, but especially back home," said Suri, who also serves as the event manager for the Pakistani Students Association and as vice president of the Cornell Cricket Club.