If these people can't get internships in investment banks, you have no chance

You have excellent academic credentials. You speak multiple languages. You know how to code. You have paid several thousand pounds to an 'intern talent scout' to find you an internship. And you're prepared to work for free. But, with investment banks' 2015 summer internships starting in approximately one month's time you still don't have a placement.

This is the situation that 10 top university students find themselves in.

A London-based organization (which we're not naming for 'sensitivity' reasons) that places students in unpaid finance internships for a fee has been circulating the names of its unplaced students. And they're pretty impressive.

The list includes Bachelors and Masters students in economics, statistics, risk management and financial engineering from top UK universities like Imperial, Warwick and UCL. Some speak Mandarin and Cantonese and English. Others speak French and Italian and English. They're competent in Excel, Python, C++, Java and VBA. And they mostly want to spend 10 weeks this summer working in research and analysis - although some will be happy with operations and compliance. All for absolutely nothing at all.

If you have the misfortune to be a 'good' student who needs to find a paid internship through your own efforts, the chances of doing so now were always going to be slim, but are obviously made slimmer by the cohort above. The good news is that Barclays still has summer intern vacancies in global markets and investment banking, even now. The bad news is that these available intern positions are in Frankfurt and Zurich.