A 329 clears every field average by a wide margin. The question worth asking is what the Verbal-Quant split says about which programmes you fit.
A 329 is the kind of score that makes the rest of the file matter more, not less. It clears every published field average comfortably, so nothing about it will hold you back — and nothing about it will carry a thin research record either.
As good as the GRE realistically gets. A 329 clears every published field average, so the score is not what any committee will discuss.
A 329 is above the reported average in all 8 fields, from Physical Sciences at 314 down to Education at 301. No field average is a constraint on this score.
Treat those averages as orientation, not thresholds. They are means across everyone who reported a score in that discipline, which mixes together programmes with very different expectations.
Here is the thing most pages about a 329 get wrong: it is not one score. ETS reports Verbal and Quant separately, publishes a percentile for each, and publishes nothing at all for the sum. A committee reads the two halves.
The distance between the best and worst version of a 329 is the difference between the 47th and 99th percentile on a section. That is not a rounding detail, it is a different application.
An even 329 means 165V and 164Q, and those land at the 95th and 63th percentiles. The asymmetry catches people out constantly — it comes from who takes the test, not from how it is scored.
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.
The one thing worth checking at a 329 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 percentilesCheck that your weaker section still clears whatever floor your target programmes publish, then leave the test alone.
The total is mostly an administrative convenience. What varies — and what gets read — is the section score, which at a 329 can sit anywhere from the 47th to the 99th percentile.
You get two percentiles, not one. A 165 Verbal is the 95th; a 164 Quant is the 63th. ETS deliberately does not combine them.
Yes. There is no field in the ETS data where a 329 sits below the average admitted score.
Balanced it is 165/164. The extremes are 159/170 and 170/159, which is why the split is worth stating on an application.