It's definitely worse in some departments/fields than others. While we didn't have anything like the rotation that you mention, we were not expected to do research the first year I was in physics grad school, since we were all TA's. That's in contrast to people I knew from the EE dept., who had to have an advisor picked out before they set foot on campus and were expected to start research the first day of school.

It's my understanding that in the biosciences, it's the norm for students to do rotations of a couple weeks in every group in the department to help them pick an advisor during their first semester/year.

And if picking and advisor is like picking your parents, your research topic is definitely like an arranged marriage. You have to learn to love it...