Introduction: regional public universities face growing institutional competition, requiring insight into high school students' perceptions of offered programs. Perceptual factors such as institutional image, economic considerations, and emotional aspects influence vocational choice intention. Objective: to analyze Latacunga high school students' perceptions of the Marketing program at Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi, identifying associated institutional dimensions. Methodology: quantitative approach, non-experimental cross-sectional exploratory-diagnostic design (n=380 public high school students). Adapted survey from García-Martínez et al. (2024), PLS-SEM (SmartPLS 4), 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Results: model explains 52.5% of choice intention variance (R²=0.525, moderate). Significant: emotional (β=0.335, f²=0.164), economic (β=0.244, f²=0.102), image (β=0.165, f²=0.042), services (β=0.129), infrastructure (β=0.127). Non-significant: location (β=0.067, p=0.060). Conclusion: choice intention is multifactorial; prioritize emotional/economic factors in strategies, with image as complementary. Contextual evidence for regional positioning. General Area: Social Sciences. Specific: Educational Marketing. Type: Original article.