Over the past decade, the shortage of teachers in Germany has steadily worsened. This article focuses on lateral entry into the teaching profession in the Federal State of Saxony, using the example of TU Dresden. First of all, it will explain how lateral entry is structured in Saxony from a legal perspective, and how academic education is implemented as a central qualification element for the professionalization of lateral entrants using the example of the BQL project at TU Dresden. Subsequently, findings from the ZLSB’s accompanying research on the program will be presented and discussed. For this purpose, 705 written interviews at the beginning and 204 at the end of the lateral entry program were evaluated. The focus is on the conditions for success and occupation-specific professionalization characteristics of the lateral entry program; in particular, self-assessments and job-related beliefs as well as motivations for career choice are examined. In order to identify possible differences and similarities with undergraduate students studying to become teachers, the results will be compared with findings from the accompanying research on regular teacher education programs at TU Dresden. In the case of lateral entrants, there is a very high degree of similarity to the results for students studying to become teachers. Only in a few aspects of the surveys are there findings that show, for example, that career choices are more autonomous, and that decisions and perceptions of the teaching profession are less influenced by external factors among career changers.