A 313 is roughly the average admitted score in several fields and short of it in others. Which one you are applying to decides the answer.
A 313 is neither a problem nor an advantage. It sits close enough to most field averages that the rest of your application decides the outcome — or a few more points shifts it into clearly-above territory.
Average, roughly. A 313 matches what several fields report and misses what others do — 7 clear, 1 short.
Adding your two section scores together is something you do, not something ETS does. There is no official meaning attached to 313 as a single figure, which is why two people holding it can be in very different positions.
The distance between the best and worst version of a 313 is the difference between the 9th and 99th percentile on a section. That is not a rounding detail, it is a different application.
An even 313 means 157V and 156Q, and those land at the 73th and 39th percentiles. The asymmetry catches people out constantly — it comes from who takes the test, not from how it is scored.
Against the field averages ETS publishes, a 313 clears 7 and falls short of 1. The ones it clears include Engineering, Computer Science, Social Sciences; the nearest one it misses is Physical Sciences, which averages 314.
Read them as a temperature check. They place your score inside a discipline; they say nothing about a particular department's expectations, which vary far more than the field mean suggests.
Improving from a 313 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 313 the Quant half sits lower in percentile terms, and that is normally where the accessible points are — the crowd is less dense around it.
The stack that works: targeted verbal or quant drilling, a two-month plan, and timed practice tests to confirm the gains survive the clock.
The one thing worth checking at a 313 is whether the split fits the field. The GRE percentile calculator gives the real percentile for each section, which is what your programme is looking at.
Check your section percentilesWorth considering, with a condition: name the section and the target before you book. A 313 responds well to focused work and poorly to another general pass through the material.
Get your discipline's two averages, line them up against your two scores, and let the bigger gap decide whether to book and what to study.
A retake makes sense here if you can name the section you are fixing. If you cannot, the extra months rarely pay.
For some fields yes, others no. 7 of the eight ETS reports sit at or below a 313; Physical Sciences at 314 is the closest one above.
Balanced it is 157/156. The extremes are 143/170 and 170/143, which is why the split is worth stating on an application.
Worth it if you can say which section you are fixing. A general second pass at this level usually reproduces the score.
Above the 313 engineering average, yes. The number that matters more there is your Quant score on its own, against 163.