This article analyzes the motivations and preferences of students who enter to study the university career with the highest enrollment in Chile: Commercial Engineering. Through the application of descriptive, inferential and multivariate statistical techniques (Joint Analysis) the responses of 106 students from northern Chile were examined. The results revealed three key motivational factors for the career choice (work output, professional vocation and feeling of achievement) and two determining attributes for the selection of the university (accreditation of the career and focus of the curriculum). It is also evident that the students coming from private school education have higher extrinsic motivations, but with a lower level of vocation for the career than the students of subsidized or public education.