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<p>You’re definitely better off waiting until you arrive on campus before you start looking for a job. Most employment opportunities aren’t even posted until then. During registration/orientation (unless things have changed), you’ll have a chance to fill out your I-9 and W-4 forms and then you can go off on your job hunt.</p>
<p>make sure you bring necessary identification with you when you get to school. when I got my job I didn’t plan ahead and had to trust the USPS more than I’d really like to in order to get documentation of me being me and American.
if you’re going to be a freshman, Looseleaf, you probably shouldn’t email a professor just yet, unless you did some really compelling research in high school or something. I think emailing after your first semester is over is actually ideal, so you could conceivably start working in the spring. (that would, I guess, mean finding something else to do with the fall.)</p>
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<p>You can email some professors now telling them that you are interested in the work that they are doing and ask for course recommendations or summer reading. I would not ask about lab opportunities until August.</p>
<p>This post has been very helpful.</p>
<p>I think August is still pretty early. even the most enthusiastic students I knew last year did not connect with a lab until their second semester, and I know that biology discourages brand new freshmen from trying to get in a lab too soon. when I started working as a sophomore, I got a few (positive) comments about how I was quick to starting lab work.
I guess you can try whatever you want to, though.</p>