Thing is, Uni doesn't HAVE to be about "waiting for your Sims to come home from a lecture and doing assignments." That was my point. If you ( (and that's a general "you," by the way, not a specific you; the only sentence in my reply that was directed at you specifically was the first sentence, contradicting your statement that the only reason to go through Uni was for the memories. That may be the only reason you, specifically, do it, but that's not necessarily the reason that anyone else does it) find it "boring," then you either need to not do it or you need to find a way to make it interesting for you. My solution to that was to make it more exclusive and to make it harder to get a degree. But everyone else's idea of what's fun is, of course, going to be different. Again, that was the point. The game and its EPs in their vanilla state are all tools to be used as the player sees fit. Just because Uni is, to you specifically, boring past the sophomore year, it doesn't mean that it is for anyone else. Like I said, to me it's a symptom of you, specifically, just needing to find a way to make it not-boring. Or, you know, a cue that it's just not for you in general. And there's nothing wrong with that.

MMK I see your point.

Um, jobs in the main game take a lot longer than three hours when you're waiting for your sims to get home.

No I mean the whole University like Sophomore, Freshman, Junior, Senior etc

I suppose if you go through a whole Uni career in one go it might take 3 RL hours. Or less. Or maybe more. For me, it's pretty fast if the household only has one playable because the game goes to ultraspeed while they're in class. And it's even shorter if that one playable happens to be a vampire (I've got a lot of supernaturals in my game) because they're in their coffin for half the day, during which time the game is on ultraspeed. On the other hand, if I'm playing a household with multiple playables, it takes longer because they don't usually all have class at the same time and I'm often pausing to queue up actions for all of the household members. And if anyone is one of the supernaturals that doesn't sleep much or at all -- like Plantsims or werewolves -- so that the household is hardly ever on ultraspeed, then it can take even longer.

That being said, I never play a college career in one go unless it's the very start of a neighborhood with a single founder and that founder starts out in college, but that's not a typical start for me. Usually I have multiple founders and sometimes only one -- or none -- start out in Uni. But anyway, I play in rotations through my households. If the neighborhood is still small, I play in 7-day rotations, and Uni households get played for two college years per rotation in that case. If the neighborhood is large, then I play in 2-day/2-day/3-day mini-rotations (IOW, splitting up the week-long rotations into three blocks so that it doesn't take me forever to hit each household once I've got more than 20 or so households in a neighborhood), then I play one college semester per rotation. It works to keep ages in sync that way, especially in families where some of the kids go to college and some don't...which is pretty much all of my families, actually. One of my make-it-harder measures is to shorten Uni semesters to 48 hours each, so this fits more or less very well with the rotations I play to keep everyone in reasonable age-sync.

Misread it, sorry. I thought you said that classes take 3 sim hours.

No worries haha

I've played through university without cheating them through, it's slow, but if you have alot to do in your college community lots, then at-least you won't be bored.

I can't stand an empty house, myself, so the only sims who ever live alone at University are in dorms, where I can watch dormies be absurd. A two-person household is generally my minimum in any part of the hood.

There is so much going on in University, and I'm having so much fun, and of course there's my whole one-day-rotation thing keeping me from burning out - I am sometimes puzzled how to make my sims college careers last as long as possible!

Anyone who's bored at University, or anywhere else - try bigger households, more households, shorter rotations, switching households more often, fiddling with where and how you break up rotations, switch between different neighborhoods with different rules - don't get locked into some "right" way to play to the point that you lose the quest for fun. Go exploring. Go building. Experiment.

I put my sims on College Rampage (Macrotastic mod from JM Pescado, don't forget to place flamingo sculptures and espresso machine!), then when they are done studying, it's party-time, or rushing Greek house or date. With OFB they can even run a business. With Insim or Inteen they can have kids too. Lots of fun stories to make.

I am currently going through Uni in my Prosperity challenge now. I've only done it a few times before with a single sim. That gets very boring. I have 3 sims currently in the same dorm and it is much more fun as there is more to juggle.

It does get a bit stale though as I rarely leave the dorm (I don't really go to community lots much during regular gameplay because I don't like that time stands still at home and I come back exhausted) and I don't intend to do it too often. But it has sped up the process as time still moves forward. I'm halfway through at the moment.

I like that my sims can make lots of friends and have met potential spouses and I like the fact that they can get cool jobs afterwards.

If I have a sim that I don't see working in a dorm or Greek setting, what I do is build like a duplex or small pseudo apartment units and move single sims in there so they can still be independent but I can still play multiple sims at once. Tuna fish's downloadable key doors are perfect for only allowing the sim and their friends through so neighbors aren't using each other's appliances and stuff.

But, that's not true. Time on campus continues to pass on community lots. You're missing a fun part of the game for no reason.

If you go to the main hood or a downtown community lot though time will pause. If you go to a community lot on any uni hood though it will continue.

Many of my sims go to university. It used to bore me, but between Almighty Hat's aging mod, ACR II, Inteen, and the two day semester mod, everybody stays nicely in sync and chaos ensues. Since I like big, chaotic households best (looks around self . . . hey, I could fulfill the Marry off Six Kids want in real life if my kids want! Didn't think of that before . . . well, it'll be a couple decades, I hope!). Anyway, like I said, I like big, chaotic households best. I don't play single sim households in college as a general rule: ALT and SSU have a live on campus requirement for freshmen, and most sims at LFT live in the dorms or with roommates. (Yeah, teen parent sims get LFT if they qualify for college at all--have to have a C at least, which is not easy for them.)

Playing through university in a challenge, like the Apocalypse Challenge, can get kind of repetitive, but that's because the sims are not free to fulfill whatever wants they might throw me or free range, but under strict regulation at all times for the purposes of the challenge.

I play through university/college (I play them as two different things, more about that later) whenever my sims meet the criteria to attend. The main criteria is that they must have a want to go to college, or a fear of being uneducated, at 10pm before their teen-to-adult birthday (age transitions happen at 11pm in my game, rather than at 6pm). They must also have high enough grades to attend - A- or above for university and C or above for college. And, finally, they must be able to pay the tuition fees - $20,000 for university and $5,000 for college. Any scholarships that they've earned are subtracted from their tuition fees, which makes college possible on occasion even for my poorest sims. Sharla Ottomas, for example, only paid $1,000 in tuition fees to attend college, as she had scholarships for good grades, high logic and something else and for having been abducted by aliens, which came to a total of $4,000.

Sims who go to college generally stay at home, though they may move in with older siblings, other relatives, friends or very occasionally into their own house or apartment. I use mods to make it possible to play YA's in the main 'hood, so none of my college sims move to a university subhood. I use Cyjon's mod to alter the duration of college/university, so they have four semesters, one per year, and each semester lasts for 2 days. This allows me to keep them in sync with the other, non-YA sims in the 'hood. I play strictly based on wants, so my sims' grades (and whether or not they get expelled) depend on whether or not they roll a want to study skills, do assignments and term papers, go to class, do group research, pass the year or get on the Dean's List. A fear of ending up on probation also counts as a want to study. So I play them through the 8 days of college, allowing them to decide how much effort they want to put in and what else they want to do to pass the time.

Sims who go to university tend to be from wealthy households. Alexander Goth is my only university attendee in my current 'hood. For the first year (i.e. two days) university is much like college. The YA stays at home, generally, and studies as much or as little as they want. But then, when they start their second year, they go abroad, to study at one of the universities in Twikkii Island, Three Lakes or Takemizu Village. Whilst there they either stay at a hotel or in a vacation home owned by their family. Alexander Goth, for example, is staying at Green Thicket Manor, and if his nephew William goes to university he will probably stay there as well. At university, like at college and indeed in the main 'hood, I allow my sims to follow their wants, so the amount that they study is entirely up to them! Alex is doing alright so far, as he's a Knowledge sim he's rolled a couple of wants to make the Dean's List, but he also spends a lot of time dating his girlfriend Vanessa Chen and doing vacation things like playing mahjong and drinking tea.

I really enjoy playing further education like this - I never get bored with my YA's, because they're so involved with the rest of the 'hood and there's loads of other stuff for them to do as well as study. I am thinking about adding a small "dorm" to Pleasantview, so that college students can live away from home (for a small fee), but I haven't got round to it yet. I do miss playing households that are just made up of YA's, though, so I think I'll set one up soon....

I think Mr. Valentine was meaning that if you leave for a community lot at 8AM and spend 12 hours there, when you return to the home lot, it's back to 8AM. AND your final probably now takes place in the middle of the night because the semester clock does keep running while you're on the community lot but the time on the home lot does not. This annoys the living piss out of me, too. Same way it annoys me in the main 'hood, which is why I use the Community Time mod. Unfortunately, Community Time doesn't work in Uni neighborhoods. I wish it did because then I'd send Uni students to community lots more often. As it is, I don't often send them to community lots, and when I do send them, they don't stay for long. I have the mod that makes it so that finals can't take place in the middle of the night, shifting them to 8AM instead, so that annoyance is taken care of, at least, but the fact that their motives get all out of whack if they stay off the home lot too long bugs me. A lot.

I guess I'm a player who just likes their pixels to have a daily schedule/routine, just like most real people have, and I don't like when it gets screwed up for stupid reasons. I know some people are fine with the reliving time spent on community lots thing, that they even like it, and that's fabulous. More power to them, seriously. I, however, am not one of those people. I'm thinking Mr. Valentine isn't, either.

I dislike the fact that my sim at University was at a community lot, left the community lot because he had to go to class, came back to the community lot, returned back to the dorm and went to the same class again -.-

Well, at least you can skip the class without penalty. Attending classes can be a good performance booster too.

I used to play all the way through Uni. But I don't anymore. I just do part of it and then use the college adjuster. It's just too long for me. I know I could download mods to shorten it, but I haven't found one that I really liked.

University is super long and tiring

If it had more things to do then I would play it

I usually do send them to university, I think it's fun. Besides, not going to university is a negative memory, and if I don't send them there they'll start crying at random times. And that's just really annoying.

Dreams, you have not looked properly if you think University needs more things to do in it! Get out and explore and experiment and try All the Interactions and make a Greek house from scratch and build more community lots (because the ones that come with are mostly just too big and empty) with stuff from later expansions and let your immature sims run wild and learn from the school of hard knocks - I send all my playables and it's my favorite EP and I have still not done a lot of things that are there to do! College isn't about studying! It's about discovery!