Some grad programs require students to do rotations through different labs in their first year. If a student is choosing a program to work with a particular professor, then the student should make contact with that professor to make sure that they are accepting students. Many profs only have lab space for a finite number of people to work.
Knowing a particular set of techniques isn’t critical, since it’s also common for lab workers to go work in a particular lab for a short time in order to train on a technique. Often newbies are assigned to somebody - research staff, a postdoc, a senior grad student - who gets them settled in the lab and shows them how to do things. Even a person experienced in a particular technique needs to be shown how to do it in a new setting - the equipment may be different, or the shared stock solutions are made at different concentrations. You can make everything to be what you are accustomed to, but it’s sometimes easier to just adapt to the norm for that lab. There are often many ways to do the same thing.
Also, the best faculty for a particular field are not necessarily found at the most elite schools. There is fantastic research at those schools, but for any given field the leader might be at a state U. If she’s set on a particular area of research, she should find a couple of different places where people are doing that work and then find out if they have space for students. Even if she is sure of what she wants to do, she may still need to do rotations. But, if she only wants to work with a particular faculty member, she doesn’t want to get to a school and then find that there isn’t an opening for her. Rotations are awesome for students who are more undecided, though. Often the first year of grad school involves hearing presentations from faculty and more senior students so that first-years can get a good idea of all of the research being done in the department.
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