The article reveals the concept of life choice and its connection with the personality characteristics on the example of students of higher education institutions who have experience of changing their specialty. As a justification for the application of the concept of «style» in this context, the hypothesis of the determinism of the choice of one of the alternatives by personal characteristics is considered, the integral characteristic of which is the «individual style of decision-making». The importance of the chosen type of life choice is justified through the concepts of the compulsion and normality of this choice. The hypothesis of subjective dissatisfaction as a factor in the formation of the situation of the selection process itself is confirmed. Empirically, the problem of the characteristics of the experience of choice is explored with the help of quantitative and qualitative methods: a questionnaire to identify the experience of changing the specialty and its causes, a deep semi-formalized interview with a focus on the phenomenology of the selection process and the features of its subjective experience. The result of the article is the selection of a typology of preferences for alternatives in a situation of uncertainty based on personal characteristics, which includes several basic styles based on certain criteria: the degree of subjective compulsion; on the basis of content characteristics - in favor of uncertainty and in favor of immutability; based on the duration and depending on the subjective evaluation.