A mechanism is proposed to reduce overhead at the expense of increasing latency for UEs with weak link gain, while the latency for most UEs may remain the same. In one aspect of this disclosure, a UE may determine the number of attempts for transmitting a RACH signal based on one or more of path loss, the transmit power of the UE, the beam correspondence at the UE, or the power of signals received during the synchronization subframe. The UE may transmit the RACH signal in the determined number of attempts. In another aspect of the disclosure, a base station may combine signals of one or more RACH attempts to decode a RACH signal. The base station may inform a UE regarding the number of RACH subframes that the base station uses for decoding the RACH signal through a random access response message.