Possible choices: Class and Gender Narratives in Private Higher Education This thesis analyzes the relations between university students, higher education market and social markers of difference (class and gender in particular). The field research was conducted between 2015 and 2018 at two profitable private colleges in the city of São Paulo, focusing on students who are the first generation of their families to enter in higher education and were enrolled in three different courses (Pedagogy, Nursing and Administration). The follow-up of the higher education market through fairs, market reports and institutional websites, as well as widely publicized advertising in the city, complemented the analysis. After a period of expansion of the sector, followed by an important political-economic crisis in Brazil, the thesis focuses on three processes of choice among students-the decision to enter in higher education, the choice of the course and the institution-, reflecting in a nuanced way about such decisions, constituting possible choices. The research mobilizes two main hypotheses. The first hypothesis considers how the recent expansion of higher education in Brazil (mainly from the early 2010s) introduced this stage of education in the field of possibilities for low income young and adult women, constituting new imaginary about education, work and social mobility. In this context, the lucrative private sector, due to its strong investment in advertising and its geographical distribution in the city of São Paulo, has become an important, albeit ambivalent, reference in the pursuit of the diploma. The second hypothesis refers to how such choices in higher education (of course and institution) are made. I analyze how students mobilize perceptions about their own social positions (negotiated according to worldviews and lifestyles, in addition to categories of social stratification) but also mobilize dreams, "vocations" and affinities. Thus, it is about making these students' narratives visible by reflecting on the university experience, the expectations of social mobility (in particular, the desire to "work in the field") and the polysemy of the diploma.