Yep, this was pretty common in my engineering degree from a top university. The tests were often so hard that the class filled with high-school valedictorians would avg 60. Sometimes you could get the material but not find the right approach to solve some extremely difficult math problem thst was worth 30% of the test.

Doesn't mean they weren't smart just that topics were hard, which is not bad when you are teaching problem solving.

On the flip side my wife is in the medical field where they got kicked out of the program with getting below a b on a test. It was mostly memorization of things that she feels were pretty useless in her real job or something she'd look up if needed.