A 301 is below the reported average in every field ETS tracks. This page is about the shortest route out of that, not about school lists.
A 301 usually reflects an unfamiliar test rather than a ceiling, especially if this was a first sitting or a practice run. The sections are learnable in a way that makes this number the least permanent thing in your application.
Not yet. Every published field average sits above a 301 — and this is the part of the scale that moves fastest with preparation.
Improving from a 301 is a targeting problem before it is an effort problem. Points are not equally valuable across the two sections, and they are not equally cheap either.
At a balanced 301 the Quant half sits lower in percentile terms, and that is normally where the accessible points are — the crowd is less dense around it.
Start untimed. Get accuracy stable on quant practice and verbal practice before adding the clock, then build from a three-month plan.
Nobody at a graduate department opens your report and looks for 301. They look for the section their programme cares about, and that number is not visible from the total.
The distance between the best and worst version of a 301 is the difference between the 0th and 99th percentile on a section. That is not a rounding detail, it is a different application.
An even 301 means 151V and 150Q, and those land at the 43th and 24th percentiles. The asymmetry catches people out constantly — it comes from who takes the test, not from how it is scored.
Before committing to a retake, price it. The GRE percentile calculator converts each section score into its published percentile, which shows you at a glance which half of a 301 is holding the total down.
Open the percentile calculatorAgainst the field averages ETS publishes, a 301 clears 1 and falls short of 7. The ones it clears include Education; the nearest one it misses is Biological Sciences, which averages 306.
The averages tell you where the middle of a discipline sits, which is useful right up to the point you pick specific departments. After that, only their published numbers matter.
Retaking makes sense from a 301, provided the next attempt is different from the last. This part of the scale moves substantially with targeted work and barely at all without it.
Book the date far enough out that the preparation can actually change something, and decide in advance which half you are fixing. Our retake guide has the scheduling.
Start with whichever section is further from your field's average, and work untimed until accuracy holds before adding the clock.
For some fields yes, others no. 1 of the eight ETS reports sit at or below a 301; Biological Sciences at 306 is the closest one above.
Balanced it is 151/150. The extremes are 131/170 and 170/131, which is why the split is worth stating on an application.
Probably, but give it a real cycle first. This part of the range moves substantially with targeted work and barely at all without.
It is under the 313 reported for engineering. Those programmes weigh Quant heavily, so look at that section before the total.