I have a a hate/love relationship with the cow mascot. I kind of like how they flirt randomly and stir up drama so I don't use a mod to keep them away. Same with drama professors, I now have the met self memory fix from BO and not drama fix just so drama proffs can go back to being annoying. I guess because I don't have mods like ACR so for the most part my game is mostly drama free and that is why I like to keep them. I even married one in, a cow, recently.

Romance mod and the no instant love mod kind of help to balance out how much effect cows and drama proffs have.

When the cow mascots become a nuisance, I use MoveObjects_On to put them in an enclosure. Since my dorms have a narrow empty strip down each side, a water-filled trench at each end of a strip will keep in both cow mascots and ghosts. So long as the prisoner is alive, there will be no more cow mascots, and peace reigns. Sometimes a prisoner will prove to be immortal, but often a cow-mascot will die after a few days. I have had a cow mascot be scared to death by the ghost of the previous cow mascot. Once a ghost has manifested, the grave stone can be sent, via the repository of a playable student, to the college chapel grounds, where it can entertain knowledge students with a wish to see a ghost.

Andrew, I would play it without mods first (except the one winking simsample suggests). That way you can find out what you want to mod. Have a look at Pescado's - there is a couple of those that you may find you need to take care of small annoying things (noassignmentlitter comes to mind - because visitors will start doing assignments in your home, and leave them there unfinished without it).
I think you already have the (as Jo says) romance mod and the no instant love - but even in my before-knowing-about-mods game, some of my Sims got along with the cow mascots - and some married their professors
As for residence - I actually dislike the Greek houses and prefer dorms (where they party all the time anyway) as well as controlling all the Sims in that dorm.So try both, and decide which you like better.

I've never used noassignmentlitter...

I simply cannot stand the cow mascots. The Visitor Controller takes care of them nicely.

As for unfinished visitor assignments ... I thought those literally vanish once the visitor leaves? Sometimes it takes a while, but I don't think they just stay there. At least they disappear in my game. I don't have that Pesacdo mod, so the vanishing act in my Sims' dorms can't be due to that.

Devon Aster, good catch with the Mega College Pack. I forgot that you might need more EPs with that one.

I think only Uni is required. It's just compatible with Apartment life. Just like the FreeTime version is compatible with FreeTime, but not with Apartment Life.

You know, Peni, all these years and I never knew the secret society and the Greek Houses weren't the same things. You learn something every day.

Um - how did you do that? Did you never play the existing Greeks?

I only recently started playing Greek houses. We don't have them in Britain and I never really knew what they were, so I never bothered.

I am also yet to visit a secret society! I did once have a sim get accepted, but my game glitched, and I never got to go to the lot.

WRT mods, as with anything, I think it's probably best to get to know the vanilla game and its behaviours before you start messing around with adding mods. Wait to see what bothers you. Out of the ones which have been mentioned I've added some extra commentary if I think it's necessary, but a good rule of thumb is always to try without, and if you feel you're missing some feature, I'm sure somebody will know if there's a mod that does what you want.

Andrew, you mentioned a mod with only one professor. Never fear! Even if you did install the mod, all it does is set one professor for each subject. The vanilla behaviour is that two professors will be generated for each subject; always one male, one female. If you add multiple universities to your neighbourhood, they share the same set of professors, cheerleaders, mascots, etc. It's not possible to set different universities up to be actual rivals; they will act as an extension of each other. The professors will wander around campus and you can meet them at community lots. There is no way to directly tell which professor is for each subject, but when your sim declares a major and attends their first class in that major, a little pop up will come up stating that they met two professors, and their names. These will be the two professors associated with that major. At this point, I find it handy to grab a notepad and write down which professors teach what subject, because during the course of university students will tend to meet other professors, too, but they can only improve their grade by improving their relationship with their own subject's professors. And - yes - while you can improve grades by simply schmoozing professors, I much prefer to think of this feature being that if you spend time getting to know your professor, you'll learn lots about their subject because of course they are very passionately interested in it. And if you keep insulting your professor, they may well choose to dock your grades! But this is nothing that can't be fixed by avoiding them and working hard in other ways.

I find that my teens tend to roll go to college wants very briefly at the beginning of their teenhood, and then strongly towards the end of their teenhood. Perhaps with ageing off, this wouldn't work the same, though. I believe there are mods which nix the wants entirely.

Aspects of Marka's list I feel like commenting on:

College Adjuster ---- This is one of the ways to extend college time, as it has options to reset the time remaining in your current semester, as well as send students back to semester 1 if you particularly wanted to - perhaps to emulate that German system! It also has a number of other useful features similar to the sim blender.
College YA Aging Fix ----- This relates to mods like ACR and Inteen which uses a sim's "internal" age. You definitely don't need it.
No Finals at Night ---- This slightly fixes what Peni describes - when the college clock counts down and your final exam happens - day or night! This just ensures that the exam is delayed until 8am if it happens to be triggered in the middle of the night. Personally, I find this a nice addition. I don't like them going off for exams at 3am, when they should be partying!
No Meeting Professors ---- This stops your students from meeting their professors by attending class, which seems counterproductive, to me. Absolutely not a must have - totally personal preference.
Stinky Dormy Fix ---- This is worth mentioning, if only because the connection isn't immediately obvious. Dormies will leave their assignments lying around, and assignments are coded to advertise highly in all motives except for hunger, so nonplayable sims will choose to do their assignments over other things. However, it also means if their hygeine is low, they'll see an assignment and think, in their sim-way, that this will make them cleaner! (You know, maybe this would explain a lot of real students' hygiene practices...) And they'll do the assignment instead of showering, and stay stinky.

No College Nagging stops pop-ups which are triggered in relation to ageing. I don't think you'll need it.

If you don't know what the Community College mod is, you don't need to worry. I think ganzania was referring to problems caused if you install Uni with the Community College mod installed. Since you don't have it, don't worry about this.

Squinge's Mega College Pack mostly refers to mods which help you set up a university right in the home hood, but IMO, that is overcomplicating things. Stick with the normal college first! The two mods which stop negative memories, aspiration drop and random crying in the days after ageing to adult without university are usually included with this College Pack but you can download standalone versions here: http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,8962.0.html (Those also don't require later EPs, I don't know if the later ones do.) The two you need are nomemoryuneducated and nowantsatisfyuneducated. (It stops fears, not wants, I don't know why it's named that.)

I would say your best two options for stopping time advancing too fast are either the College Adjuster or Pescado's College Clock. The college clock looks better for stopping time, and seems to automatically stop time when aging is off AND the clock is on the lot, but the College Adjuster has more extra features. Anything like the College Pack is just overcomplicating the task, IMO.

You can also increase grades by woohooing professors. Romance aspirations can make good use of this.

Only if you woohoo the one who teaches your major, as Bad News Bev found out. (She got a C for that semester.)

Andrew unless you want lots of them over time, get the only one proff mod. The game spawns two Proffs for each major, so if you have one sim doing drama and another doing history that will make four proffs.

Never. When my sims want to join a fraternity, I make them apply for a charter. I have joined the secret society once or twice, but as I said, I thought it was the same thing.

Assignments vanish by themselves? They did not in my vanilla game! (Honestly, I had my students do some of those assignments lying around!) Could that have been fixed by a patch then or is there perhaps another mod that may be taking care of that?

They didn't appear to vanish in my game before I got the noassignmentlitter mod. I have the UC, so presumably it's patched. Dormies do occasionally get back to assignments they've left behind, but it was never often enough for me. I got tired of them cluttering up all the available space on the cafeteria tables and any desks. There is at least one other mod that will dispose of assignments. I don't have it, so I don't remember the name, but (if I recall correctly) it was some mod that altered the NPC cook to allow them to trash abandoned assignments. Something like that, anyway. I'm not sure if that as the only thing it did, or if it altered the NPC cook in other ways as well.

The only downside to noassignmentlitter, is that it does seem to cut off the option of tutoring others for money (since the assignments disappear pretty quickly).

Yes, noassignmentlitter makes the assignments dissolve if dormies leave them abandoned. It prevents the dorm from being filled up with unfinished assignments left all over every available desk, table, floor tile, etc.

I also use Syberspunk's nopartyassignment and couldn't live without it. This prevents dormies from doing assignments in bathrooms or during parties and prevents non-resident lot visitors from ever doing them at all. Big list of other features in the description.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,2419.0.html


While looking for the download page for nopartyassignment, I discovered Syberspunk also made nopartyresearch, which is similar to the above, but for group research instead of assignments. I haven't tried this one yet. It has 2 conflicts with Pescado's nouniprotect (which I don't think AndrewGloria is likely to use anyway ) - I don't anticipate these causing any problems in my game and am eager to try it out.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...ic,11553.0.html

I'll try to deal with some of the things I missed in my last post.

maxon, when I said English courses were shorter, I was probably thinking of the Scottish four-year Honours course, which is I believe a year longer than is normal in England. In the Arts faculty at least, most students did take Honours (and I presume still do). Students taking Honours had to choose the subject(s) in which they intended to take Honours, at the latest at the end of their second year. I presume that, when Sims choose a "Major" they are doing something similar. We didn't use the term "Major" when I was at university. I presume it's part of the American system, but I could do with some clarification.

About exams: In Scotland we reserved the term "Finals" for the exams taken by Honours students at the end of their final year -- that's the Senior Honours year. "Degree Exams" were taken by all students in 1st and 2nd Years at the end of the academic year (i.e. the end of the third term - the "Summer" term). In these years students would also sit less important "Class Exams" at the end of the 1st and 2nd terms. Ordinary Degree students would follow a similar pattern in 3rd Year and would be awarded an "Ordinary Degree" based in their results in all their Degree Exams. They never took "Finals" as such, and they never really had to specialise, so they could study a broader range of subjects than Honours students. Honours students took no exams at all in their Junior Honours year, but then had a massive diet of "Finals" at the end of the Senior year. Their Honours Degree was based almost entirely on their performance in those "Finals".

If I understand it correctly Sims sit exams at the end of every Semester, but they're still called "Finals". With Semesters only 72 hours long, that sounds arduous to me, but if I can stop the Semester Clock, it could be even more fun than a real university course.

Jo, when I say some my teens aren't ready for university, I just mean that, intuitively I feel they're not ready yet. I think my playstyle is realistic with a tinge of utopia. I always treat my Sims as if they were real, and imagine conversations with them. Using my imagination, I'll try to send them to university at a time when I think they'll benefit most from the experience. In fact a principle motivation for me getting University at all is that I enjoyed my own time as a student, and I'd like my Sims to have a similar opportunity, especially bright intelligent Sims like Andrew and Julian. . . .Yes, I know. I'm 50 times madder than my Sims and I ought to be certified! But I don't think I'd enjoy the game if I didn't imagine my Sims as "real". On the other hand I'm sure University can provide a "bridge" between school and the big world -- even in Real Life some people can mature a great deal during their time at university.

I can't understand why I would want my Sim students never to meet any professors. As a student myself I certainly talked to members of the teaching staff, some of whom were professors. So I won't get that mod, not to begin with anyway. But thanks for your suggestions anyway Marka: it's just that one I really don't care for.

Actually I'm minded to start with very few additional mods as some of you have suggested. I think the Visitor Controller (which I have already) bans cow mascots by default, but I can edit the BCONS to allow them as I have already done for Mrs. C. (With my configuration I use an older global version of the Visitor Controller, which relies on clones of the "lady in Red" picture.)

I do have the Romance mod but not No Instant Love. My Romance Sims don't want me to get that one! So we'll just have to rely on the Romance mod to help my Sims resist the ravages of predatory cow mascots and drama professors. We're not likely to remove drama from the university curriculum -- remember Veronaville is Shakespeare's neighbourhood! Anyway Andrew says you prove your love by resisting temptation, and that you can strengthen your relationship by working through your problems together. I think he's very perceptive for his age, but then, what would I know?

simsfreq, I was thinking of sending Andrew in particular to university without leaving home because he is so attached to his mother, and I think he'll be reluctant to leave her alone. However he does seem to be rather excited about Greek Houses, and he can't have it both ways! I presume that the Community College is one way to got to University at home. In any case I think that, as in Real Life, students will gain far more from the social side of university if they move away from home.

I have a feeling that a newspaper rack by (I think) Numenor also deals with abandoned assignments, but I'll have to check that - I may have totally mis-remembered.

No I don't want nouniprotect! I think that's that horrible mod that makes dormies drop dead when they get back from lectures! GRR! NO!

Well it's past my bedtime again so again I'll have to leave it till tomorrow. I'm sure you'll have some new posts for me by then. Thanks again to everyone, and an especial thanks to Peni and simsfreq for those long detailed posts. They must have taken quite a bit of time and thought. It's one of the things I love about this forum -- the way people really put themselves out to help me. Perhaps more than I deserve. I feel I have some real friends here and I do appreciate it.

I'm pretty sure that playable secret society members (parents and friends) count towards secret society induction. I recollect a couple young sims who would've only really known their folks and aunts and uncles getting abducted on their first day of college!

Andrew, college feels like it takes forever for me without mods. It's about as long as an aging on unmodded adult lifetime. (Gloria will probably think it's far too long for her boys to be away from her!) I choose to send my teen sims at eight days to adult, but you can send them five minutes before they age up if you prefer. Stay away from Pescado's nouniprotect as you don't wish to see Mr. Grim!

Edit: One thing no one has mentioned is how easy University will be for your sims. If you let them go to class and do a few assignments, maybe a term paper, they will be getting straight A+s. Maybe eight hours out of those seventy-two. I know your teens have lots of skill points, so they will not have to skill for grades. Sim University is much easier than real.

No one mentioned never meeting professors, one professor simply makes it so the game spawns one per class not two. Given that there are at least 10 or more Maxis subjects that means 20 + professors, most who are quite annoying. They turn up and ring the doorbell, and ring the doorbell and ring the doorbell. Your millage may vary, you may like to have them all, The one proff mod is just an idea as most people feel the game has too many.
I've never used nouniprotect and wouldn't since I don't want dormies dropping dead either.

If you play in Autumn all your sim needs are the required skills and to go to class. They can pass the final exam if their class meter is half full. They don't need to do a term paper or even an assignment. They also get money for passing. If they are a bit short they can work in the cafeteria and earn extra cash. My suggestion is not to get into the 'perfect' grade loop way of playing. Meaning don't be forcing them to do a ton of assignments and term papers and get perfect scores, there is a lot more to uni than study. With the college adjuster you can always reset hours to give them longer.

Andrew doesn't have Seasons, Jo! The autumn skill boost won't help him. He'll still find it plenty easy, though, since Uni gives a skill boost all on its own.

American students take two sets of exams per semester - "midterms" and "finals." Clearly that was too arduous for a 72-hour semester! Mid-terms allow you and the professor to make a reality check on your progress - if the entire class does badly on midterms, the professor knows he's screwing up, and if you do poorly on them you can see your specific areas of weakness and work to overcome them.

Majors are your area of specialization, the thing you take the most class hours in. You can also minor in a different subject, which may or may not be related to your primary subject. You don't have to declare a major right away, and a lot of people spend a few semesters taking general courses while they work out exactly what they want to do. Other people change major a number of times, which generally means they have to work harder and stay longer to get caught up. Class loads vary but 15 hours is considered a proper course load, neither too heavy nor too lax. In most fields of study, each of these classes will require at least one paper of some kind, from small class assignments of the "2000 words on the use of metaphor in Romantic poetry" sort to a substantial research paper.

This is the background; but in Sims it is of course much, much simplified. I don't want to tell you too much ahead of time, because you should have the pleasure of working things out, but where an American student might take five courses totaling three hours a week each, a sim will take one class per semester, which vary in length. Sims can major in any of the offered courses, and can change majors, or can leave their major undeclared till their third year; but they cannot minor in anything. Assignments, class attendance, term papers, and research are all optional; but if a sim is to pass the course, certain skills will be necessary. There's a grade meter analogous to the job performance meter which will let you see at a glance how the student is doing - unless you get a specific glitch. You'll know it if you get it - the meter will always look as if the sim is failing due to not having enough skills, even though you'll be able to see that the skills are there. Sometimes this glitch is only present on certain lots and it usually only afflicts one sim in a household. You'll learn to not worry about it - if the sim in question has the required skills, making him fail will be much, much harder than ensuring that he passes and even takes honors.

Another thing I believe I've had to explain here before because other university systems don't do it, is the prospect of "honors" and "the dean's list." This is not the same thing as the Scottish honors, but refers to graduating with a particularly impressive grade point average. The dean's list is a list of the students with the highest grades for the semester; in Sims, those who make the dean's list make large amounts of grant money. Sims who make the dean's list every semester, and some who don't quite get there, will graduate "with honors." These have Latin names and in real American colleges entitle you to a fancier diploma, bragging rights on your resume, and sometimes special ceremonial treatment at graduation. The lowest level of honors is "cum laude," and means your grade point average over the course of all four years is nice and high. "Magna cum laude" is a little higher than that; and "Summa cum laude" is as high as it gets; either a perfect 4.0, or just shy of it, a 3.9. (My little sister is a summa. I take every opportunity to mention this. In real life, it is a big deal!) You can make a B once and still take honors - but you won't take top honors unless you have an A+ average all the way.

Of course! *doh* forgot about that. Uni is still plenty easy though especially if you are sending teens with skills. A couple of my sims who I thought might fail went and did autonomous research and still passed. Then there are knowledge sims with full meters who still choose to do research and I have to force them to go do something fun.

All nouniprotect does is remove the immunity to having to be a normal sim from dormies. It makes them have to eat, sleep and shower like everybody else, instead of magically not having to do any of those.

Seeing as your sims are likely to find Uni too easy, seeing as they already have tons of skills, you might like the have to do term paper to pass mod, just so they have to do some work (which I cannot find; will have to look more).

I have also seen posts about dormies dying from it with pictures. Andrew would not want to worry about dormies possibly dying.

They aren't any more protected than townies. Townies get to leave the lot when their needs get low; dormies are stuck there. Requiring them to live as if they had a controlling player, when they don't, is completely unreasonable.

But it's fun.