There are two ways to sit the TEAS: at a school or testing center that administers it, or online through ATI. Settle that first, because it decides your fee, the dates available to you and who holds your result. Everything below is the general shape of the process. The exact fee, the open dates and the rules that apply to you are on ATI's site and on your program's admissions page, and those two pages outrank anything else you read, this one included.
The two ways to take it
At an institution. A nursing program, a community college or a testing center runs the exam on its own campus, on dates it sets. Seats are often reserved for that school's own applicants. Some institution sittings still use paper forms, in which case the proctor issues the calculator rather than the software providing it.
Online through ATI. You register with ATI directly and test remotely on a date from their calendar. ATI publishes the equipment, workspace and identification requirements for the online form on its own pages. Read them before you pay. They are the part people get caught by, and they are also the part most likely to have changed since any third-party page was written.
The choice reaches further than convenience. It changes what you pay, it changes who has your score first, and it can change how long the score takes to arrive somewhere. If your program's page says anything about where the exam must be taken, that sentence overrides the rest of this page.
What registering involves
In general terms: you choose the sitting, you set up or sign in to an ATI account so the result has somewhere to land, you pay, and you get a confirmation naming the date, the time, and the location or the online session.
Book in one of two places and nowhere else — ATI's own site, or the program administering the exam. Searches for TEAS registration surface resellers, tutoring companies and course sites that are not selling you a seat. A seat bought anywhere other than ATI or the school is not a seat. If a page is asking for the exam fee and it is neither of those two, close it.
What it costs
$70 to $120, depending on whether you take it at an institution or online through ATI. Institutions set their own price inside that band, which is why two schools forty miles apart can quote different numbers for the same exam. Confirm the figure on the page you are booking from rather than from any list, this one included.
The fee is charged again on every attempt. There is no retake discount and no way to re-sit a single weak section: a retake is a fresh, full-price sitting of all four sections. Two attempts is $140 to $240 before you have bought a single study resource.
Worth knowing, but it is not the expensive part. The next section is.
How far ahead to book
Work backwards from the application deadline, not forwards from today.
Nursing program deadlines cluster 9 to 12 months before the intended start date, which is the fact that catches people out: a fall start is usually decided the previous fall or winter. Missing the score your program asks for does not cost you $70 to $120. It costs you the cycle, which is a year before you start earning as a nurse.
So build the retake into the plan before you need it. ATI's minimum gap between attempts is 14 days, and 14 days is a floor rather than a sensible interval, because two weeks is not enough time to move a score by much. A first sitting six to eight weeks before the deadline leaves room for a second attempt with real study in between. A first sitting two weeks before the deadline leaves room for nothing.
How many times you can take it, and what to change between attempts.
What test day looks like
The exam is 170 questions in 209 minutes — three hours and 29 minutes of testing — in four sections that are timed separately. Time left over in one section does not carry into the next, and you cannot borrow from a later section to finish an earlier one.
| Section | Questions | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Reading | 45 | 55 |
| Mathematics | 38 | 57 |
| Science | 50 | 60 |
| English and language usage | 37 | 37 |
| Total | 170 | 209 |
Two things to know before you sit down. A four-function calculator is provided on screen for the Mathematics section, issued by the proctor on paper forms, and personal calculators of any kind are prohibited — so practice with a four-function calculator rather than the one on your phone. And 20 of the 170 questions do not count. They are unscored pretest items, they are not marked as such, and they are spread across the sections in proportion. The only workable response is to treat every question as scored.
What to bring, when to arrive and which identification is accepted come from whoever administers your sitting: ATI's exam pages for the online form, your program's testing office for theirs. Ask once, in writing, rather than assuming.
The full section-by-section breakdown.
How your score reaches a program
Your report gives a total score as a percentage, four section scores, a score for each of the twelve sub-content areas, the national and program means, your percentile ranks against both, and a list of topics to review built from the objectives you missed. There is no pass or fail on it, because there is no national passing score — each program sets its own cut.
How the score reaches the admissions committee depends on where you tested. Test with the program and it generally already has the result. Test anywhere else, including online, and it has to be sent, which takes time you do not want to discover on the deadline. Ask the admissions office how they want to receive it and how far ahead of the deadline they need it in hand.
Scores are usually valid for one to two years, and the program sets that window — often counting from its application deadline rather than from your test date. If you are hoping to reuse an older score, that is the sentence to find on their page before you plan anything around it.