Meet the students who ALREADY HAVE internships at Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse, and RBS for next summer

Most major investment banks have only just started accepting applications for their summer analyst programs in 2016.  It's sort of weird, therefore, that there are already people out there who've secured intern positions for next summer.

We reported on the strange eruption of 'incoming 2016 analysts at Goldman Sachs' back in May. In fact, Goldman isn't the only bank to have started filling its intern class ahead of time: Credit Suisse, RBS, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse are doing it too.

Morgan Stanley, for example, has already recruited interns like Magdalena Kupfersberger and Jasmine Weston from University College London and Cass Business School respectively. Credit Suisse has already recruited people like George Barrett, a physics student from Warwick. J.P. Morgan has already taken on Warwick international business graduate Oliver Hyde for next summer. Even RBS is getting in on the act: the UK bank has already hired Vanessa Odunsi, a UCL German and Latin student for summer '16.

All these students are going into 'front office' (sales and trading or M&A) finance roles. And they all have one thing in common: they've all done spring internships.

If you're not familiar with the term, spring internships ('spring weeks') are taster sessions run by investment banks for first year university students. Increasingly, the best students have done not one spring internship, but several. And increasingly, it seems banks are filling their summer intern classes with the previous year's spring students. If you don't do a spring internship, you're therefore putting yourself at a serious disadvantage to those who have.

What percentage of summer intern roles are filled by spring students? Morgan Stanley declined to comment and Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse didn't respond to our request for information. However, one graduate recruiter said banks fill anything from 25% to 30% of summer intern positions with spring students. "Soon we'll be competing for children at nursery schools," she predicted.

Photo credit: Craig Sunter