The purpose of this study was to reveal the reasons why teacher candidates attending the faculties of education have preferred the teaching profession and the explanatory relations between those reasons. To this end, 801 students who are attending the elementary school teaching departments of 6 state universities were included in the research. Mercenary, altruistic, intrinsic, and extrinsic reasons that are effective with preferring the teaching profession are the latent variables of the research. The model developed to verify the relationships between those variables was tested. According to the findings, the intrinsic and altruistic latent variables have a highly positive relationship. The extrinsic variable has a negatively significant relationship with the intrinsic and altruistic variables, while a positively significant relationship with the mercenary variable. The mercenary latent variable has a positively significant relationship with all other variables.