How many questions are on the TEAS?

The ATI TEAS 7 presents 170 questions and scores 150 of them, across four sections in 209 minutes. The other 20 are unscored pretest items, they are not marked in any way, and the only workable response is to treat all 170 as if they count.

The 20 that do not count

The unscored items are questions ATI is trialing for future versions of the exam. They are distributed across the four sections in proportion to section size, which gives this split:

Three practical consequences follow, and none of them is "relax on 20 questions".

They are not labeled, and there is no position or format that gives them away, so there is nothing to detect and nothing to skip. Your pacing is set by the presented count, not the scored one — 45 questions in 55 minutes in Reading, not 39, so the seconds per question are 73 rather than 85. And a question you dismiss as strange or unusually hard is at least as likely to be a real scored item you found difficult as it is to be a pretest item.

Every section, and all twelve sub-areas

The right-hand column is the one that should decide your study week: the share of your total score each sub-area controls. It is simply the scored count divided by 150.

Science is the largest section at 44 scored questions, and human anatomy and physiology alone is 18 of them. Chemistry is eight. Those two numbers sit in the same section and are four questions and seven points apart in what they can do to your total. These are Version 7 weights and worth re-checking against ATI's current content outline before you build a plan on them. The section-by-section breakdown goes through what each sub-area asks.

What one question is worth

Your score is reported as a percentage of the 150 scored questions, so each one moves your total by 100 ÷ 150 = 0.67 points. That converts a score gap into a number of questions, which is a far more useful thing to carry around than a percentage:

So a ten-point gap between a practice score and what your program asks for is about fifteen questions across the whole exam — roughly four per section. Five points is seven or eight questions. That is a smaller thing than a ten-point gap sounds like, and it is also the reason scattered study works badly: fifteen questions spread evenly across twelve sub-areas is one or two each, while fifteen questions found inside two sub-areas is a week of specific work.

The same arithmetic sets a ceiling on every sub-area. Chemistry is eight scored questions, so however long you spend on chemistry it cannot return more than 5.3 points. Human anatomy and physiology is 18 questions and 12.0 points. Nobody misses every question in a sub-area, so the real figure is lower still: if you are half right in both, anatomy has nine questions in play worth 6.0 points and chemistry has four worth 2.7. That comparison, not preference, is what should order a study week. How to turn the counts into a plan works through the rest of it.

Counting backwards from your program's number

There is no national passing score on the TEAS. Each nursing program sets its own required total, so the number of questions you can afford to miss is a property of your program rather than of the exam. Run the arithmetic against the number on their admissions page:

Typical requirements run 55 to 65 for LPN and PN programs, 60 to 70 for an ADN, 70 to 80 for a BSN, and 80 or above where admission is competitive — but these vary, and the only number that counts is the one your program publishes. Confirm it with them.

Counted this way, a 70 means missing 45 of 150 questions is survivable, which is a different mental picture from needing to know everything. A practice test that reports sub-area scores tells you where the misses currently sit. The free 30-question diagnostic reports them.

Common questions

How many questions are on the ATI TEAS 7?

170 questions in total, presented across four sections in 209 minutes: Reading 45, Mathematics 38, Science 50, and English and language usage 37. Only 150 of the 170 are scored. The remaining 20 are unscored pretest items spread proportionally through the sections and not marked as such, so every question should be treated as if it counts.

How many questions on the TEAS are scored?

150 of the 170. They break down as 39 scored questions in Reading, 34 in Mathematics, 44 in Science, and 33 in English and language usage. The 20 unscored items are pretest questions being trialed for future forms, they are distributed in proportion to section size, and there is no way to identify them while you are testing.

How many questions can you get wrong on the TEAS?

That depends entirely on the total score your nursing program requires, because there is no national passing score. Against the 150 scored questions, a required total of 60 means 90 correct and 60 missed, a 70 means 105 correct and 45 missed, and an 80 means 120 correct and 30 missed. Check the requirement on your own program's admissions page, since it varies by program and by program type.

How much is one TEAS question worth?

About 0.67 points, because the total score is a percentage of the 150 scored questions and 100 divided by 150 is 0.667. Ten points on your total is therefore about fifteen questions across the whole exam, and five points is seven or eight. Every scored question is worth the same 0.67 points regardless of which section it sits in.

How many science questions are on the TEAS?

Science presents 50 questions in 60 minutes and scores 44 of them, which makes it the largest section at 29.3% of your total score. Those 44 split into human anatomy and physiology 18, biology 9, scientific reasoning 9, and chemistry 8. Anatomy and physiology alone is 12% of the whole exam, more than any other single sub-area.