ATI commonly allows around three attempts in a twelve-month period, with a minimum of 14 days between them. Your program can be stricter, and many are. The limit that governs your application is the one on your program's admissions page, not ATI's, and it is worth finding before you book anything.
The short answer
For exams ATI administers, the general position is a minimum of 14 days between attempts and about three attempts per year. Treat both as the usual rule rather than a guarantee. ATI publishes its current policy, and that is the place to confirm it.
Your program then applies its own rule on top. That rule may cap how many attempts it will consider, or how many it counts inside one application cycle, or whether attempts taken elsewhere count alongside the ones sat with them. Two sets of rules apply at once and the stricter one wins.
Before you book a second attempt, find the paragraph on your program's page that covers retakes. If there is not one, email admissions and keep the reply.
What a retake costs
Full price, every time. $70 to $120 a sitting, depending on whether you take it at an institution or online through ATI. There is no retake discount, no reduced fee for a second attempt, and no way to re-sit only the section that went badly: a retake is all four sections again, 170 questions across 209 minutes.
Three attempts is $210 to $360 spent on sittings alone. The same money spent once on preparation and once on a sitting usually produces the better score, because what moves a TEAS score is what happens between the attempts, not the number of them.
Registration, cost and test day.
Which score your program looks at
This varies by program and there is no default, so ask. There are four rules in circulation and you want to know which one applies to you:
- the most recent score
- the highest score
- an average of your attempts
- the first score only
They lead to different decisions. If your program reads the most recent score, a weaker second attempt can replace a stronger first one, which is a real reason not to sit again unprepared. If it reads the highest, the only downside of another attempt is the fee and the time. One email to the admissions office settles it, and it is better asked before the booking than after.
What to change between attempts
A retake with the same study approach usually produces close to the same score. That is the most common way people pay the fee twice. The exam is stable, your preparation was what it was, and two more weeks of re-reading material you have already read moves very little.
So the decision worth making is not whether to retake. It is what will be different.
Start with the score report, not with your memory of the day. The report gives a score for each sub-content area and a topics-to-review list built from the objectives you actually missed. That is a diagnosis. How the exam felt is not. The questions that felt hard are the ones you noticed; the ones you got wrong confidently did not feel like anything at all.
Then weight what you find by how many questions it carries. Every sub-area is worth a fixed number of the 150 scored questions, and one question is 0.67 points of your total. A weak area carrying 18 questions and a weak area carrying 8 are not the same problem.
| Sub-content area | Scored questions | Most it can move your total |
|---|---|---|
| Human anatomy and physiology | 18 | 12.0 points |
| Numbers and algebra | 18 | 12.0 points |
| Key ideas and details | 15 | 10.0 points |
| Conventions of standard English | 12 | 8.0 points |
| Chemistry | 8 | 5.3 points |
Chemistry is the example that changes people's plans. Eight questions, 5.3 points, and it regularly takes a quarter of somebody's study time because it is the subject that worries them most. Human anatomy and physiology is 18 questions and 12 points, and it responds to drilling faster than almost anything else on the exam. If both came back weak, the order is not a matter of taste.
Then put the hours where they convert. Rank your weak sub-areas by questions carried, fix the top two or three properly instead of touching all twelve lightly, and give the slow-moving reading sub-areas steady time rather than a late push — they do not move quickly under drilling, so they need weeks, not a weekend.
Last, prove it before you pay. Take a scored practice test under real time limits, and book the retake when that score clears your program's requirement with a few points of margin. Not because 14 days have passed.
Find your gap with a scored practice test — or read what each sub-area asks you to do.