It's a choice I always prefer to make, because otherwise PCs are a different order of being from everyone else, including their own communities and families. That makes zero sense to me, and I will never accept it in any D&D-style game I run, no matter what the designers say. And the more the game pushes for the kind of specialness you're talking about, the less that game appeals to me. 5.5 pushes that idea harder than 2014 5e, so that is one reason I dislike it.
Look, stats vary, so the idea that the PC you choose to play might be smarter or stronger than average for their people, making them as you say "mildly exceptional" is fine, because that falls within standard variation and an equivalent NPC could easily do the same. But IMO they simply are not more special than that in any objective way.
It depends utterly on the type of game you want to run.
