We know from numerous studies that high-quality teaching is directly connected to pupils’ learning success. This is why teacher education should more explicitly address high achievers in order to recruit the right people into the profession. One way of ensuring this would be to improve the entrance conditions to teacher education programmes by providing more and better information on the professional profile of expert teachers, as well as by offering tests combined with counselling interviews to prospective teacher education students. Procedures need to be established which assess if the applicants for a teacher education programme have the necessary interests, skills and motivation, and also the required personal qualities and expectations. A considerable body of research has been accumulated on these questions, which points out both the difficulties and the potentials of such an enterprise (Paseka & Schrittesser 2012; 5th issue of the German Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 2011, which is dedicated to this subject). Before this background, at the University of Vienna, which is Austria’s largest teacher education institution, a research-based enrolment procedure is about to be developed whose design relies on the most recent pertinent studies. First results of the project will be presented and discussed at the symposium.