The comprehensive, standardized, and certified training of qualified employees is a key task of the vocational training system in Switzerland. Providing an optimal match between training companies and apprentices, the requirements of the employment system as well as the interests and abilities of youths is a central task of the Swiss educational system. The young people’s choice of a vocational or professional training and education is on the one hand influenced by the characteristics of training places on offer and on the other hand by individual decisions referring career and educational ambitions. The main emphasis of the presentation is on the forming of career aspirations two years before termination of compulsory education. We are also interested in examining how the process of change from idealistic to realistic career aspirations (and therefore education opportunity) takes place and which mechanisms are of particular importance in the context of career choice. In order to explain this process we pursue the sociological framework of rational action. By distinguishing between primary and secondary effects of origin, it is assumed that the educational choice  - after the compulsory education - is driven by the motive for avoiding intergenerational status decline. Furthermore, it is assumed that in regard to social origin and gender, diversity in career decisions on the aggregate level results from the interplay of both the young people’s socially distinctive cost-benefits calculation on continued education and the institutional procedures working at the branching point to more demanding secondary school tracks versus vocational training. An emphasis will be if there is a difference between autochthonous and migrant pupils in career aspiration and the perception of the educational opportunities, costs and benefits of the different educational opportunities.

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