A good TEAS score is the one your program requires. There is no national passing score, so the honest answer is a number you have to look up rather than a number anyone can hand you. Typical requirements run from around 55 at the low end of LPN programs to 90 and above where admission is competitive, against a national average composite of 60 to 70.
What the exam reports
Your score is a percentage from 0.0 to 100 across the 150 scored questions. The other 20 of the 170 questions you sit are unmarked pretest items and count toward nothing. One scored question moves your total by about 0.67 points, so the distance between a 72 and a 78 is roughly nine questions spread over three and a half hours of testing.
The report carries a total score, four content-area scores, twelve sub-area scores, national and program means, two percentile ranks, and a list of topics to review. It also labels your total with one of five academic preparedness levels. Programs admit on the number. The label is vocabulary, not a requirement.
The five preparedness levels
| Level | Total score |
|---|---|
| Exemplary | 92.0 – 100 |
| Advanced | 80.0 – 91.3 |
| Proficient | 58.7 – 79.3 |
| Basic | 40.7 – 58.0 |
| Developmental | 0 – 40.0 |
Two things are worth noticing. Proficient spans more than 20 points, wide enough to hold both a score that clears a community college cut and a score that misses a competitive BSN cut by fifteen questions, so being told you are Proficient says very little on its own.
And these are the Version 7 ranges. An earlier version of the exam put Advanced at 78.0 and Exemplary at 90.7, and a surprising number of pages still print those older cut points under a Version 7 heading. The label printed on your own report is the one that counts.
What programs typically ask for
Typical, not authoritative. Each row is a range programs commonly publish, and none of them describes your program.
| Program type | Typical minimum composite | Where that lands on the levels |
|---|---|---|
| LPN / PN | 55 – 65 | Upper Basic to mid Proficient |
| ADN (community college) | 60 – 70 | Proficient |
| BSN | 70 – 80 | Upper Proficient, up to the Advanced line |
| Competitive or selective BSN | 80 – 90+ | Advanced, sometimes Exemplary |
Read that against the national average of 60 to 70 and the shape of the problem is clear: the average person sitting this exam is below what most BSN programs ask for. That is the ordinary starting position, and the distance is measured in questions rather than in aptitude. A ten-point gap is fifteen questions. A scored practice test tells you which side of the line you are on today.
The composite is what most programs read
Most programs compare one number with one cut, and that number is your total. The four content-area scores are diagnostic information for you rather than admissions criteria, in most cases. The score calculator turns four section scores into that total, weighted the way the exam weights them.
In some cases, though, a program sets a floor under one or more content areas as well as the composite, most often on Science or Mathematics. That is worth asking about directly, because the four areas are different sizes and a floor on one of them is a different demand from a floor on another:
| Content area | Scored questions | Share of the total |
|---|---|---|
| Science | 44 | 29.3% |
| Reading | 39 | 26.0% |
| Mathematics | 34 | 22.7% |
| English and language usage | 33 | 22.0% |
Science is 44 of the 150 scored questions. A science minimum therefore governs almost a third of your exam, while an English and language usage minimum governs 33 questions in the fastest-paced section on the test.
Clearing the bar and winning a place are different questions
A published minimum is usually permission to apply, not a prediction of admission. Where a program ranks its applicants, and most competitive programs do, the score that mattered last cycle was the average of the students who were actually admitted, which sits above the published floor. Asking the admissions office for that average is the single most useful question on this page.
The two percentile ranks are how the report hints at the same thing. A national percentile rank of 70 means 70 percent of that comparison group scored at or below you. It is a rank, not a score: a percentile rank of 70 is not a 70. The program percentile rank makes the same comparison inside your program type, which is closer to the pool you are ranked against.
Two practical consequences. If you are applying to several programs, plan against the highest requirement on your list rather than the lowest. And plan to clear it by a margin rather than to land on it, because one sitting is a noisy measurement of anybody: three points of cushion is about five questions.
Where your own number is written down
On your program's own admissions page, for the cycle you are applying to. Not on a ranking site, not on a forum, and not on last year's version of the same page: the number moves between cycles.
If the page is vague, email the admissions office and keep the reply in writing. Five questions settle almost everything:
- What is the minimum TEAS composite for this cycle?
- Is that a minimum to apply, or do you rank applicants by score?
- What was the average score of the applicants you admitted last cycle?
- Do you set a minimum on any individual content area as well as the composite?
- If I test more than once, do you use my highest score, my most recent, or all of them?
Once you have the number, a good score stops being an opinion and becomes arithmetic: your required score minus your practice score, divided by 0.67, is how many questions you need. Where those questions should come from is a separate decision, and not usually the subject you are most worried about. The study-plan method works through it, and the free study guide has the blueprint the allocation runs on.
Common questions
Is a 75 a good TEAS score?
A 75 is Proficient, it is above the national average of 60 to 70, and it clears the typical LPN and ADN ranges comfortably. Against a BSN program asking for 78 it is three points short, which is about five questions. Whether 75 is good depends entirely on the number your program publishes, and on whether that program admits everyone above its floor or ranks applicants against each other.
What does Proficient mean on the TEAS?
Proficient is the middle of ATI's five academic preparedness levels and covers total scores from 58.7 to 79.3. It is where most examinees land. The band is more than 20 points wide, so it contains both scores that clear most ADN requirements and scores well short of a competitive BSN cut, which is why programs set a numeric requirement rather than a level.
What is a good TEAS score for a BSN program?
BSN programs typically publish a minimum somewhere between 70 and 80, and selective ones ask for 80 to 90 or higher. Those are common ranges rather than a rule, and the published minimum is usually the floor to apply rather than the score that wins a seat. Check the admissions page for the program and the cycle you are applying to, and ask what last cycle's admitted applicants averaged.
Is a percentile rank the same as a score?
No. Your score is the percentage of the 150 scored questions you answered correctly, adjusted so that different forms of the exam mean the same thing. A percentile rank is the share of a comparison group who scored at or below you, so a national percentile rank of 70 is not a score of 70. Programs set their requirements on the score.
Can a high TEAS score make up for a low GPA?
Sometimes, and it depends on how the program weights the two. Many programs score applicants on a points system that combines the exam, GPA and prerequisite grades, and in that structure a higher exam score genuinely offsets a weaker transcript. Others treat the TEAS as a threshold and the GPA as the ranking factor, in which case it does not. Ask the admissions office what the weights are before deciding where to spend your time.