A 334 is above the reported average in every graduate field ETS tracks. From here the score stops being the thing your application has to argue.
You are at the end of the useful part of the scale. A balanced 334 puts you at the 98th percentile on Verbal and the 76th on Quant, and there is very little room above either of those.
Yes, decisively. A 334 is above the reported average in all 8 graduate fields ETS publishes data for, and there is little room left above it.
Every field ETS reports sits below a 334 — the highest of them, Physical Sciences, averages 314. There is no discipline where this total reads as weak.
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 334 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.
At this end the split matters less, simply because there is not much room to be lopsided. A 334 lands between roughly the 63th and 99th percentile whichever way you build it.
Take the even split, 167 and 167. Same number twice, 98th percentile on one section and 76th on the other. Anyone comparing their two scaled scores directly is comparing different rulers.
Probably not. A 334 is above every published field average, and ETS shows programmes your full score history under ScoreSelect unless you choose otherwise. Retaking to move a number that is already doing its job is a poor trade.
There is a single scenario worth the trouble — your field reads one section closely and that section is behind. Otherwise the score is finished.
A total hides the two numbers programmes read. Run your Verbal and Quant through the GRE percentile calculator to see the published percentile for each, then compare those against your field rather than comparing 334 against a rule of thumb.
Check your section percentilesStop preparing and start writing. Nothing you do to this score changes an admission decision, and the statement of purpose still can.
The reported engineering average is 313, so a 334 is above it — but those programmes read Quant closely, so check that half against the 163 field average.
Split, usually. A department in a quantitative field is reading one number, and across the ways of building a 334 that number ranges from the 63th to the 99th percentile.
The honest answer is that a total percentile does not exist. Your two halves do: 98th and 76th respectively on a balanced 334.
Comfortably. Every graduate field ETS publishes an average for reports a total below 334.