ATI TEAS Guide: Format, Scoring, and How to Prep (2026)

The Test of Essential Academic Skills — everyone just says TEAS — is a standardized admissions exam from ATI. Nursing programs and many allied health programs use it to check whether you have the reading, math, science, and English skills to survive their coursework.

You don't take the TEAS because a state requires it. You take it because a school requires it. That one fact drives almost everything else: the school decides what score you need, how many times you can retake it, how old your score can be, and often where you're allowed to test. Before you register, pull up the admissions page for every program you're applying to and write down their TEAS rules.

The current exam is ATI TEAS Version 7. It has 170 questions in four separately timed sections, taken in this order:

Twenty of the 170 questions are unscored pretest items that ATI is trying out for future forms. They're mixed into the sections and look exactly like scored questions, so treat every question as if it counts.

Inside a section, you can move back and forth and flag questions to revisit. Once you submit a section, it's locked — you can't go back. That makes pacing inside each section the whole game.

The pace you actually need

• Reading: about 1 minute 13 seconds per question, and that includes reading the passages.
• Math: about 1 minute 30 seconds per question — the most generous section.
• Science: about 1 minute 12 seconds per question, with a lot of content to recall.
• English and Language Usage: exactly 1 minute per question — the tightest section.

A basic calculator is built into the exam and available in every section. Personal calculators aren't allowed, so practice with a basic on-screen calculator instead of your phone.

ATI breaks each section into sub-content areas, and your score report shows how you did in each one. That makes them the best map for your studying. Here's how the 150 scored questions divide up:

Reading

Expect short passages, notices, and graphics. You'll find main ideas and details, make inferences, spot the author's purpose and point of view, tell fact from opinion, work out word meanings in context, and pull information from tables, schedules, and other visuals.

Math

Think fractions, decimals, and percents; ratios and proportions; solving equations and inequalities; word problems; unit conversions (metric and U.S. customary); geometry basics; and reading charts and basic statistics.

Science

Human Anatomy and Physiology is tied with Numbers and Algebra as the largest sub-content area on the exam, at 18 scored questions — body systems, how they work, and how they interact. Biology covers cells, DNA, genetics, and cell division; chemistry covers atoms, reactions, and acids and bases; scientific reasoning covers experimental design and interpreting data.

English and Language Usage

Grammar, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, formal versus informal writing, and figuring out vocabulary from context and word parts.

About 80% of TEAS questions are standard multiple choice. The other 20% or so are alternate item types:

• Multiple choice: four options, one correct. Some include charts or graphics.
• Multiple select: five or six options with two or more correct; the question says "select all that apply." There's no partial credit — miss one and the whole question is wrong.
• Fill in the blank: you type a word or number. Follow the formatting instructions exactly (decimal places, units, and so on).
• Ordered response: you drag four to six items into the correct order — steps of a process, for example.
• Hot spot: you click the correct area of an image, such as a structure on a diagram.

Multiple-select is the easiest place to throw away points, because there's no partial credit. Treat every option as its own true-or-false question, and don't assume there are exactly two right answers.

Your score report — ATI calls it the Individual Performance Profile — includes:

• An adjusted individual total score from 0 to 100%.
• Content-area scores for Reading, Math, Science, and English and Language Usage.
• Sub-content-area scores for each skill group listed above.
• An academic preparedness level: Developmental, Basic, Proficient, Advanced, or Exemplary.
• Comparison data: national means and national percentile ranks (and program means for schools that use TEAS at ATI).
• Topics to Review: the objectives you missed, which feed ATI's Focused Review.

The total and content-area scores are equated — based on percent correct but adjusted for differences in difficulty between test forms — so you can't recompute them from your raw answers, and the section scores don't average into your total. Sub-content scores are simple percent correct and aren't equated, so don't compare them across attempts.

What's a "passing" TEAS score?

There isn't one. Each school sets its own cut score, sometimes with minimums for individual sections too. ATI's own guidance is that your school will most likely want you in the Proficient level or higher. Competitive programs may want more — the only way to know is to ask the program.

If you tested remotely with ATI proctoring, your score shows up right away marked "Preliminary" and typically becomes final after about four business days. TEAS scores are usually valid for two years, but each school decides how far back it will accept them — and schools may shorten that window when ATI releases a new blueprint.

You have up to four ways to test, depending on what your school accepts:

• At your school (in person or remote, run by the institution)
• At a PSI test center
• Online through PSI
• Remotely with ATI proctoring from home

Register through your ATI account at atitesting.com. The fee depends on where and how you test and is set by the school or testing provider, so check the price when you pick a date. Bring a physical, current, government-issued photo ID with the same first and last name as your ATI account — a mismatch can keep you from testing.

Sending scores

Your registration includes one transcript credit. If you test at your school, the transcript goes to that school automatically. If you test with ATI or PSI, nothing is sent automatically — you have to request it. Applying to several programs means buying additional transcripts.

Retakes

ATI doesn't impose a waiting period between attempts; retake limits and waiting periods come from each school. Every completed, scored TEAS counts as an attempt even if you never send the scores, so don't use a real attempt as a "practice run" if your program caps attempts.

ATI notes that most candidates study for several weeks. Six weeks at about an hour a day is a reasonable plan if you took high school or college science recently; give yourself eight to ten if A&P is a distant memory.

1. Week 1 — Diagnose. Take a timed practice test (ours is full-length, or use ATI's free one). Rank the sub-content areas from weakest to strongest.
2. Weeks 2–3 — Science first. Work body system by body system: structures, functions, and how systems interact. Make flashcards for the vocabulary. Add biology and chemistry basics.
3. Week 4 — Math and Reading. Drill percents, proportions, unit conversions, and word problems until they're automatic. For reading, practice timed passages and graphics.
4. Week 5 — English plus review. Punctuation, agreement, pronoun case, sentence types, and word parts (prefixes and suffixes pay off in science, too). Revisit your two weakest science systems.
5. Week 6 — Full-length, timed. Take at least one full-length practice test under real conditions — sections in order, timed, 10-minute break after Math. Review every miss and every lucky guess.

ATI TEAS Version 7 is the seventh TEAS blueprint ATI has launched, and it's the version in use now. ATI produces multiple equated forms for each blueprint, so the test you take won't match the one your friend took, but it measures the same things on the same scale.

As of September 2026, ATI hasn't announced a replacement blueprint. If a new version is announced, expect schools to update their requirements — ATI notes that schools may shorten how long they accept older scores when the blueprint changes. Check the test changes tracker before you register.

• ATI Help Center: how to prepare for the TEAS — ATI's study advice, including how to access its free online practice test.
• ATI TEAS prep page — a free version of the official TEAS prep app, plus the paid study guide, practice tests, and SmartPrep tutorial.
• ATI Help Center: TEAS exam details — rules, ID requirements, calculator policy, and test-day expectations.
• ATI Help Center: scores and transcripts — how scoring, preliminary scores, and transcript sending work.

Then take our free TEAS practice test — a full-length TEAS 7 with 170 original questions at real timing — and check our best TEAS prep books guide before you buy anything.