<p>I’ve been offered an assistantship and I have talked to and kept in contact with a couple of professors with research projects I’m particularly interested in. However, these projects do not have funding yet and they would not know until the end of summer. What is the norm to finally getting a project? Before summer or in the fall when you start?</p>
<p>I actually did the opposite: didn’t get an assistantship at first, and talked to profs until I got a RA offer. It seems like the project begins when the funding is available in general.
If you have an assistantship going in, I think the norm is to take classes, see what you want to go into, and kind of start your project from there.</p>