2 min lesson
Common failure modes and their fix
Rebuild the parts of "Common failure modes and their fix", then say why each one matters.
Step 1 of 3
Common failure modes and their fixdiagnose your low scores fast
If your scores look like this…
- Method tour over impact
- You narrated process and never said what changed → re-record the portfolio case, opening with the decision
- No quant depth
- You hedged on sizing, MDE or experiment bias → do a quant refresher; have power and SRM ready cold
- Generic, non-Cursor answers
- Your story could be told by anyone → add one first-hand Cursor friction with a hypothesis
- No clear tradeoff
- You presented one version of every study → always carry a 48-hour and a two-week version
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Full explanation
The one-week gap plan
The one-week gap planconcrete, daily, re-testable
- 1Daily Cursor use. Use it as your real editor every day this week and log frictions as you hit them. By Friday you have a stack of authentic, specific material for the values round.
- 2One re-recorded case study. Re-record your portfolio walkthrough opening with impact, cut to under ten minutes and re-watch with a timer until no sentence is padding.
- 3One quant refresher. Drill sizing-to-MDE, the qual/quant reconciliation move and spot-the-bias on a survey and an experiment until they're reflexive.
- 4Revisit your weakest module. Map your lowest rubric dimension to the track module that covers it and rework that one before re-running the mock.
The readiness gate
Re-run the full mock at the end of the week and confirm every dimension scores 4 or higher across all four rounds. If one cell is still a 3, that's the only thing you work on next. Don't walk into the real loop with a known 2 anywhere on the grid.
Score the gap, not the average
Your overall "average" is meaningless to a panel - they remember the worst moment, not the mean. A loop with four 5s and one 2 reads as the 2. Spend your prep on raising the floor, not polishing what's already strong.