For simmers who have played both, what are the pros and cons of each? I've never played University and am curious which I should try first.

You can go to college in the home neighborhood?

Using Mods university is achievable in normal hood locations.
Not sure which mods though. I know they exist but don't have any.

Personally They live, study and play in the same place, The Uni campus.
I don't play Sims often right now, and Uni I touch the least, so I won't be able to answer the Original Poster's Question.

I've played Young Adults just about every way except I haven't tried exchange students (Bv hood) I know laura has done something with that, but I'm not sure if it worked or not.

Using Squinge's College pack you can play a uni student in the main hood who stays at home similar to correspondence or who moves into a house, flat or pretend dorm. When I say a pretend dorm I mean a house with numerous bedrooms and an adult who cooks and cleans and 'overseas' the students.
If your YA is going to be doing UNi studies you willw ant to grow him/her to YA with Squinge's cake as this gives a 'went to college' memory. http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,96190.0.html You also need a semester Tester http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=148693 I think you can cheat for one if you prefer.

Then there is Lions Uni in the base hood. That uses a gold record and you make a dorm in the main hood,s end your teens there and they grow up into YA. The Uni acts just like a uni complete with mascots spawning. I have done this as well, but prefer to sue Squinge's version now. You can use both, so a sim attending a Lion Dorm and another sim doing Uni at home.

If you want YA in the main hood who are not doing Uni, use the simblender to age them up and keep a check on their days. When it's time to age them up, age them back to teen then to adult or age them up (they age to elder) and age them back down.

Jessa ( linked video above) uses Squinge's College pack.

Hmmmm, seems like it'd just be simpler to send them to the subhood than try to create a homeworld colege

All you need is to age them up and start the semester tester, not hard at all. If a player wants an actual home world college then I guess it wouldn't be hard for them as that is what they want.

Not all young Adults have to be uni students. You might have one that works at a shop (mod to hire YA) or perhaps they have money and want to travel, or just bum around and mooch off parents.

I like a sub-hood because it gives the sense of a university as a location and as an entity in its own right (I work in one, so there's that).

I like the idea of main hood uni but I decided that subhood uni fits my playing style better after all, since I like to play in generations and therefore don't like to complicate things too much and spend too much time on that. Also, playing in rotation, my rotation system is different in college subhoods than in the main hood, and if YAs would live with other non-YA Sims it would make it impossible (well, not impossible, but really complicated, since I'd have to adjust age spans way too much) So yeah, I love the simplicity of playing a subhood uni.

It worked well enough for me to be happy with it :-) The YA('s) must be staying in an owned vacation home (not a hotel or campsite), as otherwise they can't go to class/exams - at least in my game. And as I couldn't get a mod that increases the maximum length of a vacation to work they had to briefly return home part-way through their course and then go back again. I just pretend that that hasn't happened, though - it's necessary for me to work round the game's restrictions on vacation length, but as far as my story is concerned I pretend that they stay abroad until they graduate (or drop out/are expelled).

I love playing university students in vacation destinations - the combination of being a student and being in a strange/new/foreign place make it really fun for me. I also like being able to send relatives/friends/partners out there with them, even if they're not studying - for example, sometimes adult siblings go with the university student, and they can just enjoy the vacation whilst their sibling studies. I use Squinge's mods to allow for universities in vacation destinations.

Something that I may do in the future but haven't tried yet is a scholarship/support system for poorer sims, so that they can sometimes also attend university - as well as giving them discounted fees (in my game university (in a vacation destination) costs $20,000 and college (in the main 'hood) costs $5,000) I would also have a rich household purchase a vacation home and then transfer it to the scholarship student(s), for them to live in whilst they were studying abroad.


I have also played college students in the main 'hood using Squinge's mod but had them living in an actual dorm. The game doesn't spawn dormies or other university NPC's like mascots etc, but they can live in the dorm for free (or you can deduct money using mods to represent the costs of dorm living, like I do), and it allows a group of students to live in a property that they wouldn't be able to afford to buy or rent.


I did not know this! Do dormies spawn as well when using this method, do you know, Jo?

Also, in my experience if you place one of the Lion gold records on a community lot only YA's will visit the lot when you take a playable sim or sims there. Could be useful if you want to make a Student Union or college library or anywhere else that would be YA-only. I use the Visitor Controller, so it's not that much use to me, but it might be to someone else. Also, if it's on the lot then YA's can go to class/to their exams from that community lot. I don't think that they can if it's not (in the main 'hood/vacation destinations).


I have never done this, so I have nothing much to add to this bit. I age non-students straight to adults (from teens). When a student sim graduates/drops out/is expelled I age them to adults and then subtract the correct number of days from their adult lifestage so that the ages all stay in sync - in my 'hoods, using the mods that I use to make university/college shorter, graduate sims have 9 days subtracted from their adult lifestage when they become adults. Obviously if they drop out or are expelled then fewer days are subtracted, depending on how long they were students.

After years of sending students off to the official university neighborhoods, I no longer bother.

My playing time is limited as is, and I just don't have the desire to solely focus on young adults that are away from the main neighborhood. Squinge's Mega College Pack (I see Jo has already linked to it) is one of the best mods I've added in ages, as now I can simply keep the Sims that can afford to attend college (not all Sims get to go) in the main neighborhood and keep their household in the rotation along with the others.

It's also nice having the option for young adults to continue to live at home, move out on their own, or in with roommates while attending college in-neighborhood. I've also built a couple of college campus type community lots that are set for use (via Visitor Controller) by young adults only. Having them work (in an actual career) and earn some money during this life-stage is easier as well...whether they attend college or not.

However, all of this is a personal preference, you should try both options out for a period of time and see which one you prefer...you might enjoy the traditional option more than the modded option. Either way, have fun!

Where was the mod to hire YA, again?

Here http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=41951 The one drawback is the job doesn't show up because of the uni panel. I write the job into their bio.

@lauratje86 Yes dormies spawn as well. It was quite interesting to play, but I decided if I wanted that they could use the Uni as I have Moo's Brainania attached as well.

I must try the exchange student thing at some point, just that the family needs to be rich and mine are not. I wonder if the length of the holiday could be tweaked hmm.

Sorry double post I'm not thinking too clearly.

Ah, the dormie thing is good to know. May actually make use of that method at some point, then! :-)


I think that the only families in my 'hoods that have sent any of their youngsters to university abroad are the Goths, the Landgraabs and the Manns (from Widespot). Sometimes they also paid for other YA's to study there - Cassandra Goth's illegitimate son, William, persuaded his Uncle Alexander to pay for his girlfriend, Victoria Ottomas, to attend university with him, for example. Oh, and Widespot's Goldie Hart once went to university on Twikkii Island (but then she couldn't afford to buy a house afterwards, because it cost her her entire share of the inheritance from Valentine - she had to sell the vacation home to her sister, Candy, and quickly move in her Twikkii-Island-local boyfriend, in order to afford somewhere to live after graduation).

I did download a mod that was supposed to extend the maximum length of vacations. It didn't work for me, and I couldn't be bothered to try to figure out why, so I just do without it :-) It may've been by AncientHighway? I can't remember.....

The only con to college in the base hood is that sims can't leave the lot, otherwise the college timer resets. At least that's how it happens for me. But that's not a glitch, right?

I set up a military school in college subhood. This way not only can you set up a military-looking dorm, which can be done in the base hood just as well, but you can send sims "to work" without the college timer resetting. Mine work at farms in another hood. Those sims who merely attend college can do it from home.

Otherwise, I send only a handful of sims to college outside of the main hood, when I miss a change in gameplay. I pretend they go to other countries to study.

That is a glitch. Are you using Squinge's college pack?

Some people have sims who have babies away at uni so it would be possible in the main hood. I don't know if it's inteen or ACR since I don't use either of them. In real life even 14 year olds have babies so I can't see uni students being sexually immature.

thank you, everyone. I'm so excited to try this out now :3 i've decided to make an in-hood uni due to the realism of having young adults do other things besides attend classes.

University is the only EP I HATE playing due to the fact that I had to go to a sub-hood. THIS is sooo wonderful! I already spent way too such time playing the sims @ again because I love building hoods from scratch (including homes for the Elderly) but I wanted all stages of life included into my hood, so, college life, here we come!!!

As this thread has been resurrected, a quick update: I managed to get AncientHighway's longer vacations mod working when Gummilutt reminded me of its existence, so now sending YA's to study at vacation destination universities should be even easier for me! :-D

I really love playing YA's outside of university subhood's, so I would definitely recommend giving it a go. The university that I went to was quite small, so most students lived off campus and we all spent most of our time outside of lectures in the city rather than on campus, so it makes more sense to me to have university/college as part of the main 'hood. I know that universities in other countries/bigger UK universities do have quite distinct/separate campuses though, so perhaps the Maxis/EA system makes more sense to people who are familiar with that type of university :-)

I just love the variety that having YA's in the main 'hood (and in vacation destinations) gives me! :-D

It is, of course, completely possible, if you like building, to build a uni subhood of your choice.

My dorms are built for 6 playables each (there is only 1 dorm, only different colors). I usually have 18 students on campus, and if one leaves, a teenager from the main hood will fill that room before a dormie can. If I can find one, I will simply create one in CAS - I like to control all of the students in the dorm.

Students only sleep and sometimes eat there, they have to skill on community lots, spend time at their (hobby) student clubs, work for money (baristas, performing on musical instruments or just free style. make and sell pottery, flower arrangements, toys, etc); make friends, socialize, go on dates and also write their term papers (in the library). I find dorms providing everything boring - they just sit around there all day long - so my dorms are minimal. All the official learning centres have cafeterias, the clubs have stoves so that they can make food themselves.

Over the years I had a lot of fun sending every available teen to Uni - I even sent the newspaper sims - and all those from BV . So the students learned Tai Chi and the BV dances from their fellow students.

I do not like Greek houses (pizza) and I do not like renting tiny houses - playing one student is something I do find boring.

So I guess it will be some time before I try playing campus in a main hood. But never say never, the time may come.

If you do an in-hood college using the Squinge/Chaavik college bundle, I do offer a piece of advice. Please don't do what I did and have your hood explode.

Bold for emphasis;

Back up your hood first. Before committing to this college mod bundle, MAKE SURE all your regular played Uni dorms work. All of them! And play each one for at least one Sim day.

What happened to me appears to be very rare. But it's always good to do a backup and test thoroughly before a major mod, anyway. Any major mod. And this is why.

One reason why I just had to do a massive hood reset of all my hoods with this college bundle in place and roll back a few months is that I didn't test thoroughly enough. Since everyone else has done fine with this mod package, the only thing I can think of is that I have a conflicting CC item, though HCDU isn't so much of a help telling me what the offending piece of CC happens to be!

I tested the in-college hood, sure. For many real-life hours. Did a quick test of a Uni dorm or two for a few Sim hours, sure, But what I didn't know was that in most of my lots, something about this mod package and whatever I have in my Downloads folder that isn't playing nicely with this college bundle wipes out my Uni students' UI panels. I eventually get blanks for all of them. Some of the panels take 12 Sim hours or more to disappear, but they do disappear.

If you catch the problem early enough ... no hassle. Deleting the mod bundle and rolling back the game to a point where you didn't have the mod at all will do the trick. Simply taking out the mod bundle will NOT do anything if you already have YAs in the main hood, though. Even yanking out your entire Downloads folder won't do it. You might see the UI panel look normal, then six, twelve or more hours later, it will disappear in front of your very eyes.

Another option would be to find the offending piece of CC. In my case, I admit my desire to use this college bundle dissipated pretty quickly!

Admittedly, it seems most here don't seem to have whatever is in my folders that is causing this. I haven't the foggiest. I don't have any obscure mods and hacks in my game, as far as I know. But as we've found out once upon a time here, something as innocuous as a CC sink can cause major hassles.

Is it possible to have YAs in the main hod but not have them go to Uni? If so, do they age at 6pm like the others?