A 331 clears every field average by a wide margin. The question worth asking is what the Verbal-Quant split says about which programmes you fit.
The useful question at a 331 is not "is this enough" but "what does my split say". Built as 166 Verbal and 165 Quant, this score reads very differently from the same total stacked into one section.
As good as the GRE realistically gets. A 331 clears every published field average, so the score is not what any committee will discuss.
No discipline in the ETS tables averages as high as a 331. Physical Sciences comes closest at 314, and it is still well short.
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.
Nobody at a graduate department opens your report and looks for 331. They look for the section their programme cares about, and that number is not visible from the total.
At a 331 the spread is enormous: depending on how the points are distributed, one of your sections could sit anywhere from the 53th to the 99th percentile. That is the range a single total is hiding.
Split evenly, a 331 is 166/165, which ETS puts at the 96th percentile for Verbal and the 67th 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.
There is a single scenario worth the trouble — your field reads one section closely and that section is behind. Otherwise the score is finished.
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 percentilesCheck that your weaker section still clears whatever floor your target programmes publish, then leave the test alone.
Comfortably. Every graduate field ETS publishes an average for reports a total below 331.
The range runs 161/170 through 170/161. A balanced 331 is 166 Verbal with 165 Quant.
Usually no. The upside is small and programmes see your attempts; the exception is a weak section in a field that reads that section closely.
Above the 313 engineering average, yes. The number that matters more there is your Quant score on its own, against 163.