When Mridul Pahwa received FIU’s Presidential Merit Scholarship in 2023, it was enough to propel the university to the top of his college dream list. But it was a fortuitous conversation with a stranger — an FIU alumnus from his hometown of Indore, India — that closed the deal and made FIU his academic destination of choice. “A mutual friend connected the two of us and when we talked, he told me wonderful things about the computer science program and the faculty at FIU,” Pahwa says. “FIU had a great reputation in computer science and AI, and what he told me, coupled with the scholarship, made my decision an easy one.” Still, nothing could prepare Pahwa, an only child whose mother is a teacher and whose father owns a furniture and carpentry business in India, for his first journey out of the country. When he landed at Miami International Airport in August of 2023 without a SIM card, he couldn’t even order an Uber. After rejecting an expensive taxi ride, he reached out to a student from an FIU group chat, requesting help from someone he’d never met.
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