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.
Common questions
How long should you wait to retake the TEAS?
Long enough to change something, which usually means four to eight weeks rather than the minimum. ATI commonly allows a retake after 14 days, but a fortnight of the same preparation rarely moves a score, and each sitting costs $70 to $120 with no retake discount. The interval worth planning around is the one that gets you from your score report to a practice test that clears your program's requirement. Check your program's own rule too, since some cap how many attempts they will consider inside one application cycle.
Do nursing programs see all of your TEAS attempts?
That depends on the program and on how it receives your result, so ask rather than assume. Some ask for a record of every attempt; others read only the report sent to them, and a program that administers the exam itself already holds the sittings you took with it. It matters because it interacts with which score the program actually reads, and the two questions are settled by the same email to the admissions office. Ask before you book, not after.
How much does a TEAS score usually go up on a retake?
There is no published average, and the honest answer is that it rises by as much as the preparation changed. One scored question is about 0.67 points of the total, so a ten-point gain means roughly fifteen more correct answers across the whole 150-question exam — a real amount of work rather than a better day. Attempts that change nothing about how the studying was done tend to land near the first score.
How long is a TEAS score good for?
Usually one to two years, and the program sets the window — often counting from its application deadline rather than from your test date. The same score can therefore be current for one program and expired for another in the same cycle. If you are hoping to reuse an older score instead of sitting again, find that sentence on the program's admissions page before you plan around it.
Is the TEAS easier the second time?
The exam itself is not. It is built to the same blueprint every time: 170 questions in 209 minutes, four separately timed sections in the same proportions, with 20 unscored pretest questions mixed in unmarked. What is easier is everything around it — you know the pace, the on-screen four-function calculator and what three and a half hours of testing feels like, and you have a score report naming the sub-areas that cost you marks. That report is what makes a second attempt different from the first.