Hello everyone.

I am interested in extending university gameplay beyond the typical 8 semester university experience and would like to hear about how other people simulate higher education in their game. I want to move beyond sending every sim sent to college, being on the Dean's List every semester, and graduating with honors in 8 semesters, which is what I typically do.

I would like to start having some of my sims attend community college, trade school, or even pursuing a master's degree or PhD. I eventually would also like to create some type of residential bootcamp program for military sims to attend in lieu of university. I do not want to limit the opportunity for education beyond high school to newly aged up young adults and want to find a way to allow adults and elders to obtain additional schooling if they want it.

I am planning on making some type of married/family student housing on campus for nontraditional students in university or for those who are pursuing advanced degrees.

I am aware that there are mods that allow sims to age to young adult and attend college while living in the main hood. I have not found any mods that award associate's, master's, doctoral degrees, etc or that extend the amount of time a sim attends university (i.e. attending an extra 4 semesters to get a master's degree).

How do you decide which sims goes on to college or what level of education they are allowed to pursue? For those of you who have your sims attend community college, how do you simulate this experience? Do you just send them off to class and have them study/do term papers at home or do you have a physical building with amenities that serves as a community college? How do you do technical/vocational school in your game? Has anyone found a way to incorporate graduate school into the game? How does your sim earn a master's or doctotal degree?

Basically, how do you "do" university?

For regular uni a sim needs 4 scholarships or 3 scholarships + a portfolio to qualify. Still debating if I need to raise this to 5 and 4. This includes badge scholarships. http://cyjon.net/node/301

A portfolio is a special project. A finished junker car, thriving produce, a novel, masterpiece, pottery, sewing, a cooking contest ribbon, any high-level piece off DeeDee Sims woodworking bench etc.

Really it starts long before this stage as education is a big feature in my integrated hood play. So before this many kids went to my player run highschool and or primary school. This will be changing though as I am bringing in fees for this and some of the kids currently going are going to find themselves going to the game run school. But for kids who do go there, skilling and badges is the focus plus the double ageing that I use gives them time for things like portfolios.

For community college (main hood college) sims require at least 2 scholarships + portfolio.
I have a few college buildings plus student houses in one of my shopping sub holds.
Students can though simply stay at home which I view as online college.

At uni (or uni in the base hood) I play to wants. So if the course demands a mechanical point and the sim doesn't gain that point then their grade will be lower. I do make them go to class and final exam, but things like assignment or term paper have to be rolled.
A sim who never rolls any college-related wants may find themselves on probation and failing. I have had sims fail out.

Some sims may pursue other avenues for grades, more cheaty methods. It would have to suit their personality but influencing others to do their work, hacking grades and sleeping with professors is also on the table as a way some may gain needed grades.

There is also the adults go to college mod by Christianlov, which I have and still need to test.

As to associate's, master's, doctoral degrees, etc I will decide that based on uni's final student GPA.

I haven't tried this, but what about just making a custom major that is a masters or doctorate? Wouldn't that work?

This isn't something I've tried myself, though it does sound interesting. My sims mostly attend college either from home, or in the main hood dorm. I may add uni subhoods later, but for now I don't feel they're needed. For something like a masters or doctorate program, maybe using a custom career would work? That way sims would have to go through the regular college semesters, then spend extra time as adults in the custom career if they want to advance? You can set what skills they need to 'pass' to the next level (get a promotion), what hours they need to attend 'lectures' or do internship work (job hours), and you can always require they do some outside work (writing a novel might stand in for a thesis or dissertation, for example). I'm not certain how to set a custom career reward but maybe you can make a certificate they can earn at the end.

I believe there are some objects out there that act as vocational training for adults. I haven't used them, though, so I can't say exactly how they work. But they might stand in for trade or vocational school. There is also a mod that uncouples the gaining of wants/locks from attending college, which you might find helpful if you'd like your sims to gain them a different way. The wants/locks are gained based on how well a sim grows up, instead.

Thank you all for the responses and suggestions! I will be adding Cyjon's scholarships and looking for Deede's workbench. Joandsarah77 I love all of your ideas. I will plan on incorporating your portfolio and scholarship criteria for college admissions. Wants based play is also something that I will consider. I usually have an idea in my head for a plot and make my sims act accordingly, but I think my game will be more interesting if I let my sims lead.

I am just beginning to play around with SimPe, so I am terrified of creating custom content. However, I need to get over my fear and learn because I think the suggestions to create a custom major or career that will represent advanced degrees are great ideas. I will be searching for some tutorials on how to do this. I also would like to tweak some of the original career and major linkages because some of them don't make sense to me. I need to learn how to modify lifespan too because I find the defaults to be too short.

I did find a residential graduates mod through Inteen that could probably help me with make a master's or doctoral program. Devon Aster, those are also some great ideas. I could have Sims who want to continue on for a master's stay an additional two years a write a novel to represent their thesis. Doctoral students would stay for four years and write two novels to represent their dissertation. I will have to figure out to simulate a class experience. Maybe they could work to represent an internship or graduate assistant position.

I have just started playing the sims 2 again and I would like to mix things up and get out of my comfort zone. I played a vanilla game for years, and it's time for me to take some risks. University was always my stumbling block because it was so boring after a while.

Glad to hear some of my ideas might help! I did find a tutorial on creating custom careers . Apparently, there is also something called Bidou's career editor which is a plug-in included in SimPE? I've never done a custom career myself, so I can't say how easy or difficult it would be using either method. Phaenoh did a Uni Major Revamp which changed around what careers require a college degree and also a version that changes what majors links to what careers. You might check it out to see if it matches what you want. If not, you might be able to tweak it to your liking.

I agree with you on the default ages feeling too short. I used a modified version of Almighty Hat's Proportional Aging . Though there are other aging mods out there which are both shorter and longer than hers, depending on what you're looking for.

I spiced up University by deciding my students had to want to pass. If they don't roll a want to skill or do assignments or do research, then... they don't. And reap the consequences of that. About the only thing I don't regulate is going to class. They usually go whether or not they have a want, but that's because they get auto-pushed to go. I'm not going to watch them like a hawk and stop them if they don't have a want. I also use two Harder Grades mods, one which cuts how much progress they get from doing assignments and going to class, and one that requires a term paper be written to get the highest grade. Unfortunately, I don't know if those mods can be found anymore, as I think they were done by Ancient Highway and their site is gone.

There are a few uni length mods around. I use semester changes by cjon. http://cyjon.net/node/116

There is already an adult college career http://modthesims.info/d/415772
and this one http://modthesims.info/d/415545/new...ded-german.html

Hi! Love this thread, though I won't have time for a while to write the long gameplay post I want to contribute!

However, in the meantime, I can toss in some links:

There's a set of custom majors made awhile back that are meant to simulate Master's degrees, here.

If you're looking for Ancient Highway's mods, Simbology has a whole subforum where they preserved those; if they don't have their own thread and aren't listed in other threads, then the grades/uni-related mods should be in the thread named "Member Uploads."

You could try and reverse-engineer Phaenoh's major-career linkage mod, but with a mod set made by syberspunk at MATY, it's even easier to customize your own such linkages, including level bonuses for particular careers from graduating in certain majors, among other features. That modder did a great job of writing clear documentation and making it easy to edit in SimPE for yourself!

ETA more links...


That specific mod is by Nopke, here. There is also a version by whoward that links gaining the slots/lots to job level, here. And I suppose you could even spice up that latter one, yet still make it possible to gain want slots during uni, by adding lamare's mod set which allows YAs to have part-time or full-time jobs!

I forgot about Lamare's job mod, I use that one quite a bit.
Add to that is YA as shoppers. http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,99063.0.html That one helped keep fledging Coral Bay alive as those YA love to shop and spend money at my stores.

Thank you everyone for the links and responses! I am going to check them out. Life got busy this week, so I haven't been able to get started on this like I planned. I am super excited.

My next challenge is to make apartment living more interesting.

Nice list, @natboopsie! I haven't played uni much at all, so I like this idea for all my lesser educated sims ... but, does it change anything about how the wants work in uni or are they just left as is?



Jo, does this mean that they show up in your mainhood on community lots or is that something else? Do students not usually shop?

Young Adults including dormies come as shoppers in my player run stores. Without the mod they don't.