All my sims start at level 1 uni degree or no uni degree, since I think working your way up is not only right but good for a person. The degree is only about what job I allow them to have. I just change the job level back to level 1 on the simblender before they start. So sim A may have a degree but he/she will still start off being a chef by washing dishes first.

I guess it might stop the game tricking you like it does causing your sim to get a demotion, you know the pop-up windows that show up talking about something that may of happened at your sims work and then asks you to make a choice for your sim as to what they should do about the situation? a few times i've had sims demoted because it tricked me lol it's not always the same answer although one for the Slacker Career about having to pick who should play a live concert for them is always The Naughy Llama's LOL but other ones they may change the answer to something else like the one in the science career about red and blue light, i know by fact that blue light is harder to see, at one point humans couldn't see the color blue but they change it to red on purpose TRICKERY!. So you will be able to avoid a lot of that happening going to uni probs although you might get one or two getting them to the very top.

Which chance card answers are right or wrong are random, to prevent you from just learning the correct answer. That's why it's called a "chance" card. They're deliberately unfair and make no bones about it. University graduates get them same as everybody else and going to university doesn't help them pick the right answer. There's a Freetime perk for that, which changes the odds to favor the sim whatever he picks - but it's never guaranteed, because what fun would that be?

Some chance cards do have wrong and right answers, you can find them on Snooty sims.

I never got any chance cards as of yet from the university, i've managed to go through an entire course with one of my sims without getting any so i think the chances are lower of getting them when your sims go to uni

You only get chance cards for jobs, not for classes.

And on vacations.

You can get chance cards from school (not university, children/teen school) if you have freetime. They are hobby chance cards and the stakes are very low. Usually gaining/losing some enthusiasm or bringing a new friend home.

WRT jobs, if you search using the newspaper, sims always start at level 1. If you search using the computer, the career track selection is the same for every sim who looks that day, but the level will be based on three factors: Their current skill level, whether or not they've attended private school (I'm not sure if this is actually a boost of a level or two as advertised, or whether it's a cap on max level for sims without the private school memory.) And finally, whether they have a degree which offers a boost for that career. Again, I don't know if it's an actual boost or just the raising of a cap.

By the way, there is an excellent hack for people who like customising and/or realism and/or tinkering with their game, which is worth mentioning. It's Syberspunk's Uni Careers Hack.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=6773.0
It's fully customisable (with instructions) or you can just take Ste's setup, and it allows you to pick which Maxis careers require a degree and which degrees offer a boost to which career track. Finally, it enables a nifty feature which was not included in the game; the ability to set a specific degree requirement for certain careers, for example, requiring a Biology qualification in order to join the Medicine career. It even doesn't exclude those teens who decide not to go to university; they can take an "apprenticeship" route by remaining in the teen career until they age up into the adult one.

(Slightly shameless self-plug too - if you're interested in this, you might like my uni careers enabled for teens - they progress properly into the adult ones as far as I tested, no degree required. Link in my sig.)

A tip about cafeterias in dorms and campus community lots (before I forget it yet again ). Placing centerpieces on all the tables in your cafeterias prevents sims from doing class assignments on those tables, and that in turn helps to prevent the tables from getting stuck in use. This happened frequently when I first started playing Uni and it quickly became very annoying to have to reset the cafeteria furniture all the time. The centerpieces won't interfere with students eating and you can always place desks or tables elsewhere on the lot for them to do their class assignments on.

OMG this should be stickied. Or made into a recolour of a sim painting. THANK YOU!!!!! :lovestruc

They may also need the centerpiece as centerpiece mod, because without it they may find they can't eat either.

I fear I sound a bit like a very pushy parent! But it's no more than Andrew expects of himself. He works hard and he plays hard. I don't know if he cares what I think, but I know he will do his best to please his mum. As for other students, I'm a bit sympathetic to terula8's approach. Except for the bit about "like humans, sims should and do fail at life". I don't think anyone (neither human nor Sim should fail at life. Peni used to include a quote in her signature: "All you can do is the best you can do". I find that rather inspirational. I like to encourage my Sims to do their best. Not everyone will go to university, and not everyone who does will graduate summa cum laude, but I'll try to make sure that nobody actually "fails at life". I seem to recall that Bill Gates dropped out of university to start Microsoft!

Thanks maxon! That justifies me in playing all my lots to a safe state before installing Uni. I didn't get a full reset when I installed OFB. Some lots reset but others didn't: it seemed to be related to me changing the version of the Visitor Controller. (I changed it more than once between the Nightlife and OFB versions before installing OFB, and each time I changed it I got a reset in lots that had last been played with the other version.)

Correct! My netbook PC has an on-board integrated Intel graphics chip. From what I've read, burnt-out graphics chips really started with Pets. I would quite like to have Pets because cats and dogs have always been part of my own life, and I feel my Sims are missing out by not having them, but apart from that, I'm really not bothered about not having the later EPs. My game seems more stable than many people seem to have, and some of the late EPs (especially Apartment Life) have a reputation for being glitchy. Moreover I've had OFB for nearly two years now, and still feel I've hardly scratched the surface of what I can do with it.

I haven't! I've been looking through them looking for ones with a river and high ground overlooking it. Abordale might be fine, but I've already used it for my test 'hood Teston Woods, so I'd really like a different one. With so many to choose from, there's really no need to use the same one twice. I think I'm probably going to use Patul's Le village de Patul. Actually it's based on the Rhône in France, but it corresponds in my mind with the sort of terrain I might find on the Simourris or the Simmissippi within a day's sailing upstream of LGU.

As I think I already mentioned, I intend to install it for Andrew and Julian's wedding as my wedding present to them. As to actually getting them married, I intend to age them both up to Independent Teens using the Sim Manipulator, marry them, and then age them back to ordinary teens (allowing them to go to university). I've already done this (except for the university bit of course) with Desmond and Cony, the founders of the New Desconia island community, and they've been loving as a "joined" couple of teenagers for a long time now. (I didn't install the gay marriage hack for them, because I knew they had absolutely no concept of fidelity.) My only concern is that Andrew and Julian might lose some scholarships they'd already won through being aged up, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I think I've got to do it before university because, from what he's said to me, I don't think Andrew will woohoo with Julian until they're married. He's an odd mixture of the outrageous and the ultra-conventional.

I suppose I should approach them with an open mind, and I think I'm willing to give the Beakers the benefit of the doubt if they don't actively try to torture Nervous (as I believe Peni did), but I'm afraid Olive has a harder job persuading me of her innocence. The circumstantial evidence against her seems rather damning -- all those graves in her garden! If she did kill all those Sims, that's an awful lot of suffering, especially for me who couldn't kill a Sim even in self-defence. If I had Maxis original Strangetown, I might be tempted to just leave aging on and let her die, but I've got Tarlia's version, which gives her 8 days to live, so I really have to play her properly. Don't worry though, I'll think of something. And I've got to remember, initially I've only got to play her lot till 6 a.m. the next morning.

Thanks or all the information about dorms. I think I will move most new 1st semester students into dorms as a good way to get to know other students. I must say I certainly do want dormies in my game: meeting new people, often from different backgrounds to oneself, is an essential feature of going to university. Can I ask another question about these dormies beating your playables to claim rooms: how many dormies turn up? Is it just enough to make up the numbers to fill the dorm, or is there a real risk of your playable students not getting a room at all? If it's just a case of your playables not getting their first choice of rooms, I could live with that, but if it means them not getting a room at all, I'd have to do something about it.

The little manual that comes with the university EP says you can't build a dorm from scratch, and that you must use a template dorm from the lot bin. Am I right in thinking that you can get round this restriction by using the ChangeLotZoning and the
boolProp dormSpecificToolsDisabled false cheats?

I know that you can choose other teens (including townies) to go to university with you playables, and in a unmodded game, this is one of the few ways you can make a townie teen playable. Do these ex-townie students still get scholarships to finance their studies? Unlike my playables, they presumably haven't been applying for scholarships during their time in school.

As for degree-related careers boosts, Andrew is now thinking of majoring in philosophy (which someone in this thread suggested for him) rather than a science subject, even though his LTW is to be a mad scientist. He thinks philosophy might be a fun subject to study, and he has enough confidence in his own innate abilities to believe he can progress rapidly in the science career even if he starts on the bottom rung after graduating. Didn't Phaenoh write a similar uni careers mod to Syberspunk's?

Thanks RoxEllen for that useful tip about table centrepieces. I'll make sure I use them in my dorms.

I nearly had this long post finished a few days ago, but then I volunteered to help judging Phaenoh's Urban Conversion Contest. Sorry to keep you all waiting for a reply. I'm slowly working through the backlog of lots to play till they're reset-safe. I'm really glad I started this thread. With all your suggestions, I'm sure you've helped me and my Sims to get the maximum enjoyment out of university, when I finally get it installed and start playing it.

One little aide memoire to myself -- I must remember to patch University when I install it. Having started with the fully patched Double Deluxe, I could easily forget that!

I'll warrant this post is longer than some students' assignments!

Plop down a blank residential lot, build the dorm, and then change the lotzoning. You won't have to deal with the cheats then.

You can build a dorm with ChangeLotZoning - just build a residential lot and then change it!
Townie teens bring 500 to Uni each. Also, there is money after every exam (depending on the grade) from the uni if they passed.
Once in Uni, a student does not have to register immediately and will then roll a want as to which degree he wants to register for. If he takes too long to register, the Uni will decide for him.
And Olive was framed.

If that helps, Loki Beaker is one of the most loving dads I've ever had in the game. And Circe is really conflicted -- she's really in love with Vidcund. At least she was, in my game. She can't quite get over that mistake she made -- she married the wrong guy. But Loki and Vidcund are so similar... if they weren't enemies, they'd be best friends.

Olive? Well, she's fun to watch. She gave me a May-December romance, for one (with a cute La Fiesta Tech student); she seemed less bitter after that.

I find it more interesting to believe that she was framed. Wondering who were visiting her when all those Sims were killed and leaving her bitter because she is innocent and nobody has ever believed her, so she has given up on trying to clear her name.

Dormies start showing up, one at a time, shortly after your playables arrive, and they claim the dorms over a period of a few sim hours. You'll get pop-up warnings, too. If you fiddle around about it you might not get your first choice of room, but you will never be shut out. If my fashion emergency is severe enough, I often send the sims to shop for new wardrobes before I claim doors.

Ah, yes, the fashion emergency - make sure they have some cash in hand, if you don't have a program that lets you dress sims for free! Clothes are randomly-assigned on arrival, as usual when a sim grows up, and results can be bizarre.

"Olive was framed" is a good theory. In my game she was cursed.

Then it might be more realistic to let the dormies claim the best rooms. In Real Life there would be older students already in the dorm, and, by virtue of already being there, they'll have chosen the best rooms. The new student, just arrived from school, gets whatever is left, and is probably thankful to get it.

Yes I might indeed get some bizarre clothes, especially considering some of the outfits I've townified! I have christianlov's Gussy Up for free clothes, but I generally only use it for townies. Playables have to pay for their clothes. But shopping can be fun. Peni, do your Sims actually leave the lot before they have claimed a room, to go to another lot to buy clothes? And are there usually clothes shops on campus?

Oh, goodness yes! Nobody's going to claim a room while I'm gone. The pictures that appear on the dorm door to indicate who lives there are based on the thumbnail at the time of claiming, so it's important to do your makeover before you claim the room, if you don't want to be haunted by your appearance on arrival for the remainder of your stay.

There's lots of community lots on every campus. At SSU, you go to the University Way Shops. At ALT, to the Campus Boutiques. At LFT, to the Mirage Shopping Center; a lot I hate so much I built the Crossroads Thrift Store at LFT just so I would never have to go there again. There's also places to buy groceries and small electronics (Julian can have a cell phone, Gameboy, or MP3 player!).

(Come to think of it, there was one lot I hated so much I destroyed it on every campus! This was a huge impetus to building LGU.)

On LGU I give you multiple choices for every activity, so your students can buy clothes on-campus at the Student Union or off-campus at a number of venues - a thrift store, a fancy shopping center, a Big Box retail outlet, and even a house of ill-repute where the clothes sales exist to enable changing booth woohoo. Since University predates NL, there's no restaurants on campus, but you can fix that. I uploaded three restaurants just so people who downloaded LGU could date there, too, without losing the particular character of the place.

I would always claim a room first Andrew or you may run into issues. There are clothes stores on campus.

On the subject of Olive, I briefly considered that it wasn't she who killing people to summon Death, but rather Death himself who targeted her visitors so he could appear on her lot and see her for a brief time. I went with the more obvious, cliched explanation of her being a murderer, in the end, but you could always go with a flipped version like that.

What issues, Jo? I've never had an issue doing this.

It was a long time ago, but I had a time where every dorm room was taken and my student had to move out and back in. Other times I've had a date over and had a message pop up about not enough rooms, and basically I don't trust the dorm coding not to fail.

Oh, the message about the date can be ignored. A dormie randomly moves out to make room for the date, and then moves right back in when the visit's over. And it takes hours to fill up a dorm, except the very smallest ones. Going to get clothes and coming straight back to claim a door takes practically no time.