My bf transferred to a top engineering school with a reputation for intense workloads and a borderline cutthroat students. He got stuck with a killer first semester too (Circuits, Thermo, Dynamics & Controls, and an upper div humanities course).

He had several panic attacks and gut sinking "I've made a huge mistake" moments throughout his first semester. He did mediocre on his entire first round of tests. On his first circuits exam, he scored 11 points below the deviation, and that was supposed to be the easiest one. It shook his confidence and made him feel too dumb to be at his school, and maybe too dumb to do anything but the most menial of engineering jobs. He felt like an imposter.

I'm really proud of him, because instead of letting his panic take over, he dug in like a tick and studied the ever living fuck out of that shit. On his next circuits exam, he scored an 84 (class average was a 50), which was the second highest score. He made sure his h.w. and labs for all his classes were perfect. He developed the stategy that he would never go into a test not understanding how to do something that could be tested on. If that meant weeks of staying up until 2am studying until he learned it, so be it.

Going into finals, he now has a 94% in Controls, 87% in Thermo, 91% in Circuits, and 93% in his humanities class. He has a very really shot of 3 A-'s and a B+, or possibly four A-'s.

I'm not saying his bootstrappy Cinderella story will happen for you, but that intense unrelenting hardwork and refusal to be cowed by panic WILL lead to better performances. If you are willing to throw away literally all of your free time in the pursuit of learning how to do everything you will be tested on, like not being vague on a single problem type, you WILL see better results.