A 323 is above every field average ETS publishes. This page is about which programmes that actually opens, and where the split matters most.
A 323 is above the average admitted score in every field ETS publishes data for. That sounds decisive, and it mostly is, with one caveat: the field averages differ enough that "above average" means something different in engineering than it does in the humanities.
Good, with one thing to check. A 323 beats every published field average; whether it beats your field's expectation on the section they care about depends on your split.
No discipline in the ETS tables averages as high as a 323. Physical Sciences comes closest at 314, and it is still well short.
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.
Adding your two section scores together is something you do, not something ETS does. There is no official meaning attached to 323 as a single figure, which is why two people holding it can be in very different positions.
At a 323 the spread is enormous: depending on how the points are distributed, one of your sections could sit anywhere from the 31th to the 99th percentile. That is the range a single total is hiding.
Split evenly, a 323 is 162/161, which ETS puts at the 89th percentile for Verbal and the 53th for Quant. That gap is not an error; the Quant distribution is simply far more crowded at the high end.
There is little here worth chasing. The score clears every field average, and the realistic upside is a few points nobody reading your file would weigh differently.
Check for one thing before deciding: a weak section in the discipline you are applying to. That is the only version of this that justifies another sitting.
Verify the shape before you stop thinking about the test. The GRE percentile calculator turns your two scaled scores into the two percentiles a committee will see.
Check your section percentilesOnly retake if your weaker section is below your field's average. The total is already doing its job.
The total is mostly an administrative convenience. What varies — and what gets read — is the section score, which at a 323 can sit anywhere from the 31th to the 99th percentile.
ETS publishes no combined percentile. What it does publish, for an even 162/161 split, is the 89th percentile on Verbal and the 53th on Quant.
Yes. There is no field in the ETS data where a 323 sits below the average admitted score.
The range runs 153/170 through 170/153. A balanced 323 is 162 Verbal with 161 Quant.