The relevance of the study is due to the decline in academic and professional motivation and the increase in dropout rates at departmental universities, where regulation and social desirability of responses distort the results of self-report questionnaires. The aim of the work is to develop and test a comprehensive model for diagnosing the motivation of cadets based on projective methods with subsequent quantitative processing. The materials and methods included two sites (military-technical and legal profiles), a sample of 350 respondents (240 and 110, respectively) from the 1st to the 4th year (88% male), a modified Thematic Apperception Test (10 tables), the Incomplete Sentences technique (60 phrases), and the drawing technique House-Tree-Person . Qualitative protocols were coded using content analysis with independent experts (Cohen's k=0.87; statistical processing was performed in IBM SPSS 26.0 using descriptive indicators, Student's t-test, ANOVA, and Spearman's correlation. The results showed a profile of dominant orientations: achievement motivation 34,21%, affiliation 28,93%, avoidance of failure 23,68%, power motivation 13,18%. A pronounced dynamics across the years was revealed: a decrease in intrinsic professional motivation from 7,82 in the 1st year to 6,47 in the 3rd year, with partial recovery to 6,81 in the 4th year; a compensatory increase in external positive motivation (6,937,897,62); peaks in failure-avoidance motivation (up to 6,23) and personal anxiety (up to 6,51) in the 3rd year. Correlation analysis with average academic performance confirmed the leading role of intrinsic professional motivation (r=0.581) and achievement motivation (r=0.473), with a negative influence of failure avoidance (r=-0.394) and anxiety (r=-0.276), while affiliation had a weak correlation (r=0.119). Profile differences were manifested in the predominance of achievement motivation (7,91) and competitiveness (7,18) among military-technical students, and power motivation (6,87) and cognitive motivation (7,53) among legal students. Conclusions: projective methods increase the validity of diagnostics, allow detection of a latent motivation crisis in the 3rd year, ensure early identification of at-risk groups, and provide a basis for differentiated support programs; limitations concern the specific characteristics of the studied population and the need for further multicenter validation and longitudinal monitoring.