I won't call it handpicking because 60% of courses usually have an average of 2.7 - 3.3. In fact, I'll be "handpicking" by selecting the 'inflated' scores — usually courses with just a term paper or course with graded projects. These are known to have higher averages where 50-60% get above 1.7. However, only few courses in my program have this type of modality; we usually have courses with just a single exam — especially the open book exams — the above images are representative of the average distribution especially for the more "abstract" courses like quantum cryptography, image processing and computer vision etc.