@juillet Your response is much appreciated. My son told me that the reason he gets a ‘no’ or ‘try again next quarter’ is that they say in their replies that there are no openings in their respective labs. The professor that gave him the weird advice, was actually the only one who replied after his first request to him in Freshman year, that my son was very early to start his search for a lab and like you said students normally start the search in Junior year.
You mentioned post-college programs here in the US that would expose him to research. I have been trying my darnedest to find any of those, but cannot find any that don’t require previous research. That is also the reason that I mentioned in my post that we are considering having him go overseas. Would you mind sharing some names of these programs? That would be wonderful!