What Is the ATI TEAS 7? Format, Scores, and How to Prepare

The ATI TEAS (Test of Essential Academic Skills) is the entrance exam most US nursing and allied-health programs use to screen applicants. The current version, TEAS 7, has 170 questions across four timed sections — Reading, Mathematics, Science, and English and Language Usage — and runs 209 minutes with one 10-minute break.

It is not a licensure exam. It gates admission. Your score lands next to your GPA in an admissions formula, and unlike your GPA, it is a number you can still move in the weeks before a deadline.

The format, exactly

TEAS 7 presents 170 questions, but only 150 are scored. The other 20 are unscored pretest items — 6 in Reading, 4 in Math, 6 in Science, 4 in English — and nothing on screen tells you which is which. Treat every question as if it counts, because you cannot know.

The sections come in a fixed order, each with its own clock:

Reading: 45 questions, 55 minutes. Mathematics: 38 questions, 57 minutes. Science: 50 questions, 60 minutes. English and Language Usage: 37 questions, 37 minutes.

Time never carries over. Finish Reading eight minutes early and those minutes are gone, not banked for Science. Within the section you are working on, you can move backward and forward freely and change answers — but once you close a section, it is locked for good.

Two more rules candidates routinely miss. First, there is exactly one break: 10 minutes, after the Math section, and candidates commonly report that the on-screen prompt is easy to click past without noticing. Second, a four-function calculator is built into the exam — you do not bring your own, and you do not do long division by hand.

Question formats: the part practice books skip

TEAS 7 added four "alternate" item types alongside standard multiple choice, and up to about 15% of your questions will use them: multiple select ("select all that apply" — all correct choices or no credit), fill in the blank (you type the answer), ordered response (drag options into sequence), and hot spot (click the correct region of an image). No alternate item gives partial credit.

Paper-based prep cannot rehearse a drag-and-drop sequence or a hot-spot click. That mechanical unfamiliarity costs seconds per item, which is why we built every one of the five formats into our full-length TEAS practice test — in our 274-item verified bank, alternate items are distributed the way the real blueprint describes.

How scoring works

Your score report shows a total score, four content-area scores, and sub-content scores, all on a 0–100% scale. The total and content-area scores are equated — adjusted for the difficulty of your specific test form — so they are not a straight percent-correct. ATI also maps your total onto Academic Preparedness levels; the published TEAS 7 bands are Developmental (0.0–40.0), Basic (40.7–58.0), Proficient (58.7–79.3), Advanced (80.0–91.3), and Exemplary (92.0–100.0).

There is no universal passing score. Each program sets its own cut score, and they differ more than most applicants expect — the programs we surveyed publish minimums from the high 50s to 70%+, with competitive averages higher still; see how schools set TEAS cut scores. ATI's own FAQ describes a competitive score as typically around 70–75%, and notes most programs want the Proficient band or above.

Cost, retakes, and score validity

Taking the TEAS through ATI's own remote proctoring or at a PSI testing center costs $120. Schools that administer it themselves set their own fees; ATI's FAQ puts the overall range at $65 to $125. Registration runs through your school's instructions or ATI directly.

If your score falls short, ATI requires 14 days between attempts on ATI-administered exams — and your target school may add its own limits, commonly capping attempts per application cycle. Scores are typically accepted for about two years, but that window is also set by each school. Check both rules for every program on your list before you schedule anything.

How to prepare (what the format rewards)

The TEAS punishes two things more than weak knowledge: unfamiliar mechanics and bad pacing. A 209-minute exam is as much an endurance event as a knowledge check, and Science — human anatomy and physiology above all — is the section candidates most commonly report as the hardest.

That points to a specific preparation order. Diagnose first with a timed section run, not a reread of your A&P notes. Drill your weakest sub-content areas — the score report taxonomy (for example, "numbers and algebra" vs "measurement and data") tells you exactly what to call them. Then rehearse the full 209-minute experience at least once before test day, with the real section clocks, the section-locking rule, and the break where it actually falls, so nothing about the pacing surprises you. Our simulator runs TEAS science practice and math section drill at the real section length and timing for exactly that reason.

Sources: ATI's official exam pages (exam details, scoring).