Today's UC Davis freshman cares more about money than a first-year student of 25 years ago. Freshmen who entered in fall 2001 take a dimmer view of their health than the typical freshman 15 years ago. And just over half of today's freshmen said UC Davis was their first choice campus, down from 89 percent three decades ago.

These are just some of the snapshots gleaned from the UC Davis Freshman Generations study, the first-ever longitudinal look at the beliefs and behaviors of incoming first-year UC Davis students. The report compared entering freshmen from 1976, 1986 and 2001. Among its findings:

* Last year's UC Davis freshman class is more interested in achieving financial stability through its education than the university's 1976 freshmen and less interested in developing a meaningful philosophy of life.

* Compared to their peers at other public universities across the country, UC Davis first-year students in 2001 studied more in high school.

* In 2001, 40 percent of freshmen identified themselves as politically liberal as opposed to 30 percent in 1986 and 33 percent in 1976.

Every three years, the UC Davis Student Affairs Research and Information department surveys a random sample of incoming freshmen. The poll is part of UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, which has surveyed students at 1,800 colleges and universities across the nation since 1968. Last summer 878 students -- 59 percent women and 41 percent men -- responded from a sample of 1,325 freshmen.

Students' biggest life goal in 1976: cultivating a personal philosophy. Seventy percent of those students called that objective essential. A decade later, 72 percent of students wanted to become an authority in their field. And in 2001, 75 percent of students were most concerned with being very well off financially.

Money isn't students' only concern, however. Sixty-eight percent of last year's students cited helping others in need as an important life goal, and 90 percent said they had performed volunteer work before coming to UC Davis.

The study results will assist administrators in making decisions about how to best serve students, said Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Judy Sakaki. For instance, she said, the information about students' well-being could be offered to the university's health and counseling centers.

"We look at (the results) and say, 'Are there things we can do differently to help students be successful?'" she said.

Other survey results include:

* In 1976 14 percent of freshmen polled intended to major in the humanities; by 2001 that percentage had fallen to 6 percent.

* Forty percent of 2001 students said they studied at least 11 hours a week during high school as compared to 16 percent of freshmen at other public universities.

* More UC Davis students want to study close to home these days. Twenty percent of last year's freshmen said the campus's proximity to where they grew up was very important to them. In 1986, 14 percent of students said that.

Gary Tudor, the campus's director of undergraduate admissions, said he sees little difference between students of the 1970s and today. "I see the same kind of students," Tudor said. "There are just more of them."

In 1976, 2,002 freshmen enrolled at UC Davis. By 1986 2,477 were on campus. In 2001, the number had surged to 4,426.

While the survey did not ask students their ethnicity, the report noted the wholesale changes to the campus's ethnic make-up.

Twenty-five years ago, 79 percent of UC Davis freshmen were white; by 2001 that figure had dropped to 39 percent. Also, the Asian American population has jumped from 9 to 42 percent of UC Davis freshmen. The percentage of Chicano/Latino students has risen from 4 to 10 percent. The African American first-year population has remained the same at 3 percent.

The complete UC Davis survey results are available online at http://www.sariweb.ucdavis.edu, under "Publications."