Bold of you to assume that I caught the guy with no ATIS. (I did not.)
I had two big errors on each of my local runs that very nearly cost me the job. The first run I gave a Cheyenne a 360 after missing being able to extend their downwind by maybe half a second, assuming it would buy me more time then it did (laws of physics and all but the simulation turned them on a hair) and then had them overfly three aircraft and a runway with about a minute left in the problem with some botched traffic calls (gave a traffic alert to the Cheyenne, but, in my panic, no advisory to two of the aircraft he flew over.). The second run I had a wake turbulence timer going and cleared an aircraft for takeoff from an intersection, caught it as soon as I did, cancelled clearance and had them hold position, no points lost, taxied an aircraft across the runway downfield and then cleared the intersection departure for takeoff about a second before the crossing aircraft passed the hold short line, he was off the runway, but not "clear" of the runway. I saw it happen and immediately knew I blew it.
Without those two errors my 70.73 would have been in the 80s. After my second local run I was certain I'd failed. I scored two points higher on the run then what I needed to to pass. The feeling of relief after the evaluator gave me my score was incredible. I'm honestly still in disbelief. MWH here I come!
As for the guy from our class who didn't make it, he'd struggled a bit throughout, as had I, but he put in the most effort out of everyone in the class and always maintained a positive attitude throughout. I'd be lying if I said without him being there and lifting the mood, there would have been days where I would have struggled more and/or had worse runs. Everyone in our class was heartbroken when he failed. He had one really bad mistake that snowballed in his last local run. Missed a landing clearance on a VFR fast mover that went around and destroyed his traffic pattern causing a ton of errors. Without that one simple thing he'd have passed with a higher score than me. It's really crazy, not to mention extremely stressful, how one small error or poor split second decision can cost you the job. I am incredibly lucky to still be here.