How to get higher grades for pharmacy school?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Irvine
1

I know your first response to my question is to study my butt off. Well, the problem is that I do, and I know my material, but somehow all the material I know doesn’t translate well into midterms and finals. I’m currently a 1st year at UCI (2nd quarter), and I am hoping to go to pharmacy school. These are my grades so far:

Chem 1A: C
Bio 93: B+
Writing 39B: A

My 1st midterm grades for second quarter are:
Chem 1B: 19/30
Bio 94: 20/30

Based on my midterm grades, I should expect more Cs coming my way. I’m not frustrated at the fact that I am not studying hard enough, because I know the material. However, I am frustrated with the fact that I can’t adapt quickly enough to new professors and new midterm formats. I’ve tried going to office hours to ask professors about their midterm-writing “style,” but what can they really help me with without giving me the answers? I guess what I’m trying to ask is:

  1. Do pharm schools focus mainly on total GPA or science GPA? I think my writing and other G.E. grades can give my GPA a little boost, but they won’t do much if science classes keep dragging me down.
  2. What should I do to do better on midterms and adapt more quickly to new classes and professors?
  3. Did anyone of you go/going through what I’m going through right now? What did you do to overcome the problem?
  4. It’s kind of difficult to thoroughly describe the exact problem, but I would say it’s a psychological problem. Why do I think like a different person during exams?
2

Are you sure you actually know the material? Going through lecture slides or skimming through problems and thinking to yourself “I get this; it makes perfect sense” doesn’t count. Get some problems, preferably from a previous midterm or final, that you haven’t seen the solutions to before. Try to solve them without the use of any outside aids like notes/books/internet. Then afterwards look at the solutions and compare them to yours - have you done this to verify that you actually know the material?

As for obtaining older tests, if the professors only give you tests with the answers included then ask someone else to remove the answers for you so that you can use them as practice. You can also browse through the schedule of classes to look at class websites for previously offered classes for more test practice (if they don’t restrict access/require a password/delete files).

Have you been making use of the tutoring resources available to you?
Biology:
https://sites.google.com/a/uci.edu/biotutor/
General Chemistry:
http://www.ucigcpt.com/
Organic Chemistry:
http://sites.uci.edu/ochemtutors/
Physics:
http://www.physics.uci.edu/tutoring-schedule
All subjects ($100 per class per quarter):
http://www.larc.uci.edu/