A friendly campus, a college-town atmosphere and academic prestige attract many faculty members to UC Davis, but they're not the biggest selling points with prospective students. Instead, as competition grows for the state's top students, UC Davis needs to tout more of its other strengths-such as the availability and quality of undergraduate majors and the success of its graduates in finding good jobs and getting into top graduate and professional schools. And one of the best sources for getting that information out to potential students is the UC Davis faculty. So suggests a survey of 3,747 high-school seniors who were admitted to UC Davis for fall 1998. The student survey was the largest ever conducted by the campus. Carol Wall, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the survey is providing the campus with critical information about how to best attract a diverse, bright student body as enrollments grow. "It's a ready-made opportunity to talk in a different way about the things we do extraordinarily well," Wall said. "We also need to look at other options for increasing the visibility and attractiveness of the campus to undergraduate students." The massive poll was conducted by the campus Student Affairs Research and Information Office in summer 1998. Participants included a total of 1,672 students who enrolled here and 2,075 who chose to go to other universities. This month, Wall began meeting with deans and associate deans to give them data specific to their college, division or school. The survey findings have Wall and other administrators revising campus publications and visitor tours and developing new programs to bring more prospective students here. One proposal by Wall would offer summer "magnet programs" for high-school students in the performing arts, sciences and other fields. Once third among UC campuses in student popularity after UC Berkeley and UCLA, UC Davis now faces stiff competition from UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine for top undergraduates, the survey found. Among other California universities, the survey showed that UC Davis' major competitor for undergraduates in engineering and the agricultural and environmental Sciences is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Half of all students admitted to UC Davis for fall 1998 applied to six or more colleges. Among all new high school graduates accepted by the campus, UC Davis was the first choice for 17 percent, second choice for 33 percent and third choice or lower for 55 percent. Of students who enrolled as freshmen last academic year, 49 percent reported that UC Davis was their first choice, compared to 66 percent of new freshmen in 1986. "For so long we had the reputation as being the best place for an undergraduate education in the UC system, but we have lost that," Wall said. "We need to recreate that place." Moreover, surveyed students rated UC Davis as less intellectual and less challenging than its primary competitors. Wall said that finding left her with a question: "Are we not asking enough of our students?" In choosing a college, students surveyed said the availability and quality of their intended major were most important to them, followed by the ability to get a good job or get into graduate school. However, while UC Davis was widely known for its science and engineering majors, surveyed students knew less about the campus's many offerings in the humanities and social sciences. Moreover, large percentages of students said they did not know enough about UC Davis to rate the campus in terms of its graduates' career successes. While the campus offers extensive internship and research opportunities, more than 30 percent of enrolled students and about half of all admitted applicants said they knew too little to rate them. One of the biggest problems the campus has with its image, the survey found, is that it doesn't have a distinctive one. While the campus was rated highly as friendly and comfortable, so too were the campuses that were most likely to accept the same students as UC Davis. Some of the best messengers for spreading word about the campus are UC Davis faculty, students, alumni and staff, according to the survey Admitted students who met with faculty and visited the campus rated UC Davis higher on outcome measures and institutional reputation than those who did not. More than one-fourth of admitted students said they used UC Davis faculty members as a source of information and rated the faculty members as being the most positive influence on their opinions about the campus. Wall said the changes in UC Davis' relative popularity, in part, reflect the rising reputations of other UC campuses, as well as changing preferences among students. About half of all admitted students identified location as being very important to them. Wall said growing numbers of students want to live within two hours of home. With half the state's high school seniors coming from Southern California, that preference presents a particular challenge for the northern-most UC campus. Wall said UC Davis needs to follow the example of other UC campuses and begin marketing itself to high-school students. "It's taken me about a year to be able to talk about marketing, but it is what we need to do."