In VIP students are expected to deepen both their technical skills and professional skills within the context of one team over an extended time period. For this reason, we do not allow students to freely switch from team to team.
To discourage team-switching, we have the following policies:
Juniors & Seniors (3rd and 4th-year students): Required to take a one-semester break from VIP before a team switch is allowed.
Exception: We do make occasional exceptions with the most common being the establishment of a new team. If a returning student has a strong interest in a new team (i.e. it’s the field they want to go into), but the team simply did not exist when they joined VIP, we will typically approve the request.
Sophomores (2nd-year students): Can switch to any other team the next semester. This is allowed because sophomores are generally still deciding what discipline or what part of a given discipline is of the most interest to them.