College 101
College 101
Oh, it's such a great experience in a Sim's life. They have a baby, raise it to a child, and deal with the hormonal changes that come from the transformation to a teenager. Yes, it's a proud day in life when a Sim can kick its young into the pseudo-real world known as college.
Like everything in The Sims 2, college does not come with a just a few clicks. Well, it does eventually, but at the beginning, you need to set up your virtual town to even possess a college. It's pretty easy, and we're here to guide you through the steps.
Attaching a College to a Neighborhood
When you first run University after installing it, you won't notice many changes at first aside from the new logo. However, the game makes you put on your Decision Making cap fairly early on.
The first thing you do at the title screen is select your neighborhood how you normally would. Once it loads, though, you're given the prompt to add a college, or wait for later. I'm sure you didn't buy the expansion to use the discs as coasters, so you might as well select to add a college now.
The next pop-up allows you to pick a college from three pre-made colleges to attach to your town. You can also build your own, but let's not try that yet. All three options contain the essentials for college life, so the individual one you want is up to you.
Once you add it, you'll be taken to the Campus Screen (a.k.a. the Neighborhood Screen for the college). There you'll see all the buildings for that university, plus a window will give you a back-story of it. Any lots with the green crystal above it has at least one Sim ready to go, but don't jump into things yet. For now, just check out the view. Make note of where the gym, library, and dorms are.
Once you scout your new university, you can now exit back to the Neighborhood Screen by clicking the left-pointing arrow in the top-left corner of the screen. From here, you can click the university button (it has a graduation cap on it) to view the list of colleges you have attached to the city. Basically, it's a lot like picking a neighborhood within a neighborhood.
What's cool about this is you can now select more colleges to add. If you've already added a template, it won't be on the list. However, the others will be. You could theoretically added infinite colleges to the same town. Three will probably suffice, but you may be weird like me and want as many as your hard drive holds.
All universities attach themselves to that neighborhood only. Therefore, you can't have Sims from two neighborhoods in the same college. That said, the template universities are available to all neighborhoods regardless of if they have already been attached. For example, I can add Sim State University to Pyroville, Falkon City, and IGN Town (full of jaded and bitter Sims). The Sims, however, won't be able to interact with each other.
Thinking about College
Just because you now have a university (or four) doesn't mean you have to use it. Like real life, college is an option, and Sims don't have to go. If you want to, however, you'll have to know the process.
First of all, you can simply create Sims for a given college. It's as simple as going to the Campus Screen of your choice, then creating any number of students (up to eight), just like you do families. Doing so will put all of them at the precise age they need to be at with no hassle. However, they have no scholarship, and therefore few funds to bring to the table.
In order to have a Sim from a family to go to college, they must be in the teenager life stage. Once there, they may go to college any time they wish by using a telephone. Before that, the Sim should apply for scholarships, also via a phone. Scholarships are handed out based on different criteria, such as good grades or a high Body skill. Working on any job skill will help in college and the workforce anyway, so don't let your teens get complacent.
Speaking of that, a concept you need to think about is the life span of your Sim. There's a new, hidden life stage called Young Adult that was introduced with this expansion pack. If your Sim decides to skip college, that life stage will not be available, and he will lose a good 24 days that he could have used gaining job skills.
So, if you're planning on sending a Sim from a family to a college, the first thing you need to do is get him working on job skills right away. As a child, have him paint or play chess to get his Creativity or Logic up. Not only will that ensure his getting a good scholarship or two, but he'll be ahead of the curve once on campus.
Once your Sim become a teenager, you can immediately send him to college, but you should still wait at first to get his job skills up even higher. Every point counts, after all. I recommend waiting until you get the alert that his birthday (to become an adult) is two days away. At that point, finish up anything you need to, then select that Sim as the active one. Click a phone, select "College…" from the pie menu, then "Apply for Scholarships" in the pop-up box. You'll be told how much you'll get to start with. Then, click the phone again, select "College…," and move out to the exciting world of streaking and beer!
Getting Settled in College
Once your college student has moved out, you'll have to exit back to the neighborhood screen. From there, click the university button in the top-left corner of the screen, and go to the school you wish your Sim to be enrolled in. He'll be in the Sim Bin, ready to go. Select him, then look around at the housing options.
You basically have two options: dorms or houses. Houses allow more privacy and some of the comforts of a "typical" home, not to mention faster processing times on a slower computer. Dorms will be smaller and more crowded, but cheaper, and you'll have other Sims everywhere to help out that Social Meter. The choice is up to you really, but if you didn't get too good of scholarships, you may have to settle on dorms out of need.
Assuming you choose a dorm, IMMEDIATELY hit the P key to pause the game once it loads. Take a look around it; see how certain doors actually appear to you? That's because those doors serve a special function. A Sim can claim the door, and then lock it from anyone aside himself to get in.
Within a minute, CPU-controlled Sims will begin pouring into the lot, and they'll start claiming any door they see. Your Sim will need to decide pretty quickly what room to take, hence the need to pause. Find a room you like (preferably one with a desk), and have your Sim claim the door. Lock it if you wish, too.
Now, you can go to Buy or Build Mode and tweak things how you want to, but the money you received for this term is not limitless. You could (and should) upgrade your bed, for example, but don't start making sweeping architectural changes.
With the door claimed, take another look around the dorm. Pause if you need to, but you may want your Sim to walk around. The dorms have cafeterias, where a school-funded (and CPU-controlled) worker will appear and serve meals. He'll also clean up dishes, so that's one thing you won't have to worry about. Also take note where the computer room is, if there is one, as well as the common bathrooms. Again, because of your limited budget, you won't be able to change too much, so it's best to get the layout down in your mind before doing anything.
If you instead chose to rent a house, you'll have a lot less you need to worry about. You won't have to claim anything, and the layout is probably pretty convenient. You will, however, have to cook your own meals, which may pose a time issue sometimes. However, you can hire a maid or a gardener like any residential lot to help out with maintenance.
How to Hit the Books
School isn't all about partying, and now that you're settled in your temporary four-year home, it's time to get to work. The first thing you need to do is check out the college-specific job panel. It's accessed the way all job panels are, by clicking the middle of the five buttons beside the mood meter.
The college job panel lists your current major, if you have one, and your class name, description, and time for the semester. Also there is the Sim's GPA for his college career and a new type of job performance bar, which I'll explain now.
In short—and quite obviously—the bar is your Sim's performance in school. The higher the bar, the better his grades. The bar is raised by going to class on time, doing assignments, writing term papers, and doing research at the library. The horizontal white line indicates the bare minimum performance the Sim needs to pass, and for some Sims, that may be all you want. If the bar is filling and the filled part is red, that means your Sim is below the line and in danger of failing. If the filled part is the lavender color of the interface, it means he's above the white line and will pass provided he doesn't do anything stupid.
However, notice that there are also job requirements, indicated by circled job skills. You see, even though the meter is there, it's not entirely maxed out. The white curves inside the "shell" of the meter indicate the maximums of the meter. I know that's a little confusing, but read on and it should be more clear.
At first, even if your Sim does nothing but study, its best grade will be a C or so. In order to extend the performance meter's maximum, the Sim must learn the job skill that is circled. For example, if the bubble beside Logic is circled, then the Sim must gain a point in Logic to get the performance meter's maximum up. At that point, studying more may yield a B-level performance. Usually, you'll need to gain two job skill points to give the performance meter up to its maximum maximum, which would yield an A, or a 4.0 GPA. Studying past the maximum of the bar doesn't help, so if you get that far, don't worry about going to class or doing assignments anymore.
Now that you know about classes, you'll have to know how to get to them. Luckily, it's pretty easy, and you'll get a helpful reminder when it's time. First, look at the job panel again. See the hours it lists for the class? You'll be reminded when to go one hour before the class starts (similar to seeing and hearing the carpool of a conventional job).
Your Sims are on their own to actually get to class, but it's easy. Once you get the one-hour warning, simply click your Sim, select "College…" from the pie menu, and then "Go To Class." Your Sim will walk out of the lot on his own, and he'll be in class. He'll come back to that lot when he's done; no action will be needed on your part while he's in class.
Class work helps boost the school performance meter pretty well, but nothing beats writing a term paper. To do so, find any computer and select the appropriate options in the pie menu. Writing a term paper takes awhile, but you'll get a huge boost to your performance. In fact, the boost is so huge, you shouldn't write your term paper until the bar has achieved its maximum maximum.
For lesser boosts, you can do assignments any time by clicking the active Sim and choosing "College…" > "Do Assignment." Your Sim will go to the desk in his dorm room if he can, or he'll plop on the floor and write there. Either way, the boost is small, but it's enough to make a difference. You can also research your field at the college library, but we'll talk about that in a second.
At the end of each semester (semesters last three Sim days), you'll have a final exam. You'll be warned five hours in advance that it's coming, and once you get that warning, the job panel will actually tell you how many hours to go. You still can't get there until just one hour prior, but be sure to get there on time. The penalty for missing your final exam is huge: we're talking two letter grades here. It's a pretty harsh penalty to crap away all your hard work when you simply overslept. Luckily, you'll get another warning when there's only one hour to go. At that time, click the active Sim, and select "College…" > "Go To Final Exam," and you'll be on your way.
Those are the basics of how to succeed in college. But, there's far more to cover, so read on to get all the juicy details!