<p>The original poster’s question is a really good one (I certainly wonder sometimes), and many good answers have been posted, but I think it is a question tightly tied to the question of why I volunteered to become an Educational Councillor (interviewer) in the first place. It really originally was to give something back. As a regional chair for the EC, every year I recruit a significant number of new EC’s for my region and most of them join for the same reason. They really enjoyed their time at MIT. They really enjoy talking about MIT, and they wan to try to convey the same joy in they place that they found to other prospective students. And one way in which they can do this is to offer to spend many many hours of unpaid work helping spread the word and assisting in the process. It takes maybe 5 hours for me to do one interview, and I do a bunch each year, plus all the other work that the EC requires. Heck I enjoy this.</p>
<p>And so, one of the reasons that I post on CC is precisely because so much of the information here is bad. If the information was good, then there would be no point to hanging around here. People do use this pool of half-informed commentary, biting sarcasm, and deep ■■■■■■■■ as a valid information source (scarcely believeable, but its true), and it is up to those who have some limited actual knowlege to help out.</p>