Analyzed is the problem of motivation of senior school persons for participation in professionally oriented competitions. Relevance: modern seniors easily learn technical subjects, cope with management of most of latest gadgets, and require new (not standard, interesting for teenager) format in conduct of vocational guidance events, such as quests, intelligent games in the style of TV shows, et all. Such a format allows participant to “go beyond”, look at the future profession and educational process slightly from a different angle. Methodology and research methods: a non-standard competition acts as example of intellectual natural-scientific tournament Credo Medicus, and that is a system of face-to-face intellectual competitions for two months with a break of 7 days between its stages. Participants are seniors of general education institutions. At the end of tournament field study of motivation of 30 seniors-participants (16–17 years old) participate in competitions of professional orientation (experimental group), that was carried out by means of following tests: determination of professional tendencies; motive for choosing a profession. Results of the survey were compared to the responses of 30 seniors, who did not participate in the tournament. Results: the experimental group is dominated by internal socially significant motifs (4.4), which is 0.8 more than in the control group (p = 0.0008). And in the control group, there is prevalence of internal (3.68 and 3.64) motifs over external (2.56 and 2.76) motifs. Scientific novelty of the research: it was found, that participants of intellectual tournament are more prone to knowledge and intellectual activity. When choosing a profession, they are dominated by socially significant motives, the role of external positive motives is small, and the desire to be useful for society is significantly expressed, that is most typical for medical activities. Practical significance of the research: materials of the study can serve as demonstration of experience of introducing into vocational guidance work of university a new format of events, such as the open intellectual natural-scientific tournament Credo Medicus, that allows to assess motivational aspects of choice of the profession of doctor of future applicants, and already at the stage of school education to engage in targeted training of interested and gifted teenagers.