Customer Reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 University Expansion - Fun & Bugs, Sep 28, 2023
ABOUT THE GAME: Sims can finally have more time to work on the skills they need for their jobs as well as get some aspiration rewards by going to college. The goal of the game is to have your sim "graduate" with good grades but there are alternatives. You can study hard and earn scholarships or you can streak and skip class but beware that if grades suffer too much then your sim risks getting booted from the university. Your college sim will need lots more fun than the typical adult sim, so watch that meter!
LIFELINE: Your college sim will have an additional icon on their time line of life for attending college. They can have a longer life if you manage to meet the majority of their aspirations while they attend college, which also gives you aspiration bonuses to use now or later.
MAJORS: You have the choice of several "majors" for your sim to pick from. You should have your sim go to a computer and declare a major once they get moved in. Some majors lead to new career paths. Your sim can change majors at any time until they are in their senior year.
NEW INTERACTIONS: Your sim can prank, pillow-fight, play kicky bag, entertain with a school cheer, talk about their major, and more... and whats interesting is they have these interaction choices after they move into the regular community. There are certain things your college sim cannot do because they are not a "full adult" yet. For example, they do not have the option to get married, adopt, try for baby, and a few more.
INFLUENCE: You can earn "influence" points much like aspiration rewards and use them to have other people do your assignments, type your term paper, etc. They do not have to be your friend or even know you for you to influence them. You can influence anyone, including the cafeteria worker if you live in a dorm. Be warned if you influence a sim who is in desperation of having a need met, you will use the points to influence them but the other sim may not actually complete the task - this is not a bug, it is part of the challenge of the game. The amount of influence points you can earn is affected by how many people / friends your sim has. The more friends you make, the more influence you are able to store up to use.
KEY TO GETTING GOOD GRADES: The ability your sim has to learn is affected by his/her skills. Very much like a job requires your sim to have certain skills such as cooking/cleaning, your sim's major will require them to have certain skills and your sim can only "learn" up to a point until they obtain the needed skills. Once they achieve the required skills, they can learn more. If you manage to get the "learning" meter full; then you do not need to do any more assignments, research, or term papers until after the final exam for that semester because it will not carry-over into the next.
STUDYING: Going to class WILL earn your sim some learning and will fill part of their social needs. Assignments are the fastest way for sims to earn learning and does not take down their needs much. Research and term papers are the best way to earn lots of "learning" towards school but both takes your fun meter down fast. Research is great because you can ask to join you and the more you have with you the faster your learning meter will get filled - it also will fill some social if other people join you.
NOTE: You can influence people to do your term paper which is the absolute best way to go so you can meet your sim's needs while getting their learning done at the same time. Of course if they are a sim with learning aspiration, they will want to write their term paper and you can earn 3,000 aspiration points for letting them do so.
MONEY: Your sim can work part-time in the cafeteria if they live in a dorm to earn some cash. Your sim will earn 10 simoleons for every 10 minutes worked, but it increases their needs quickly. Your sim can also tutor other sims by clicking on the other sim's assignments for simoleons.
FINAL EXAMS: Your sim(s) will have to take EIGHT "final exams" - two for each semester they are in school. After each exam your sim will need to do more assignments, research, write term papers, and earn skills in order to maintain the coveted dean's list scholarship of $1200 simoleons. Each year your sim is in college and each semester gets harder than the last with more research, assignments, etc to get your sim to max their learning potential.
MOVIES: There are several movies you can view if you get certain things to happen in your game, but FYI you will only see the graduation movie if your sim actually has a graduation party. They will change into their gown at the beginning of the party and the movie comes up at the end. I did not get the movie when I moved my sim out without the party.
BUGS & KNOWN FIXES:
* other sims quit moving/stuck - have your sim talk to them
* other sims won't stop researching - have your sim
call this sim from a community lot
* your sim's arm gets stuck out/up - have your sim play
chess
* your sim wants a party, but phone does not give option of
throw party - save game, go all the way out and start
the game over and try again. This will not work if your
sim is already in the middle of throwing a party.
* your sim can't talk/interact with someone researching
except to research with them - call from community lot
CHEATS
* go to buy mode and buy expensive items, floors, paint,
etc for the dorm you want to move your sim into
* move your sim in, claim door
* your sim can sell ANY dorm items
* your sim can replace expensive wallpaper with cheap - $
* your sim can replace expensive flooring with cheap - $
* immediately after a final exam, your sim sometimes has
the option to go to class (again!) which may increase
learning. I haven't tried it.
* have your sim interact (talk for example) to a sim that
is not done with their assignment. The other sim will
quit and stand up. Cancel whatever you told your sim to
do to them and have them "tutor for simoleans". You may
earn anywhere from 6 to 48 or even 52 simoleans.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
More fun!, Sep 15, 2023
This is a good expansion pack for an already great game! Of course, there are new objects, new clothes a new age group (Young Adult) and new professions. These add a bit of variety to a game that already has loads of replayability. Sending the teens to college gives them an opportunity to build more skill points, giving them a better chance of reaching the top of a professional career track, something I found difficult with the pre-Universtity Sims 2. It also makes me a little nostaligic for my college days. Despite getting this expansion the day after it came out, I still haven't fully explored all of the new options mainly because I care too much about my Sims' gpa's. It is hard to keep them at a A+ level while leaving time to pursue the other aspects of college life. The option of using influence points to get other people to do the homework would certainly open up more time for social pursuits (as would being happy with a B or C average), though a more honorable method of keeping grades up while socializing would be nice. Filling the skills for teens before they go to University would help save time as well. Despite this, I still have a lot of fun with it and haven't grown tired of it yet.
Now for the gripes that kept me from giving it 5 stars. One minor gripe was that when I installed this expansion and then went into a previously existing household, all of the Sims in the household were standing at attention near where they were when I last saved, with almost full meters. At first, this doesn't sound bad, but having to remember what each Sim was doing when I saved was kind of difficult. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but what if the Sim was close to finishing another level in a skill and you don't remember which skill they were working on? It can take a little game time to get things back on track. The meters being full can throw off a Sims schedule as well depending upon what time of day you saved before installing University. Only limiting college to a certain age group was kind of sad too. Sims who had just became adults before the expansion pack was installed are simply out of luck. One final negative is something I also have an issue with in the original game. The lack of clothing choice when a Sim goes through an age transition is kind of lame. It would be nice if a window similar to what comes up when your Sim is shopping would pop up so that you can choose the initial clothing of the new age like you do when you first create the Sim. Just randomizing it leads to the need to spend more game time sending the Sim shopping which isn't too terrible a thing, but sometimes time is a luxury (hope that large sentence made sense). Also, a modest Sim might be horrified by what a randomizer might pick!
Overall, those negatives do not prevent the game from being enjoyable and the new features are a very welcome addition.
1 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Sims University, Sep 9, 2023
My daughter enjoed it for a couple of days and will spend a couple hours each month in the coming year to play it more.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Fun expansion pack!, Sep 8, 2023
You can choose to send your sim off to college when they become a teenager or create a new sim in college town. Its a tough decision let me tell you. Well the Sim keeps his/her friend relationships and can choose to go back to the same house when they graduate at least. The only bummer is if you have a mate that doesn't go to college and you plan to marry them, you have to play both sides to keep the ages the same. You could play college town to death and his family back home do not age. SO you have to go back and forth alot to keep things even, if you want to anyways.
The only thing is that it is a commitment. You have to see the sim through college and it take a while. The biggest plus to sendiong them to college is that they gain options that regular sims don't have. Like more wants, and more career options. And of course that college degree you can hang on the wall. They also remember the college cheer and will do it with sims they went to college with. It is worth putting them through college, but it is like playing a whole separate game. You can spend just as much time in college town as you can in their home town.
It is also a good idea to start in college town when you are creating a new character. There are more options to creating a sim young adult there. And a good idea to create more than one sim in the same household, you can give them different family names and they can move into different houses after graduating. It is a good idea because you can work on more than one sim at a time. I usually put a couple together that I want to marry later. That way they can build relationships and finish school together.
It is really hard to decide where you want to divide yout play time!
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 Would be a great EP if the bugs didn't ruin it, Sep 6, 2023
The idea behind this EP is fantastic, it's too bad it was literally harpooned by the bugs. Only a small number of bugs can be blamed on custom content, numerous others are due to internal errors in the code of the game itself. Reach a certain number of character files in your neighborhood folder(about 800) and you'll be plagued by frustrations such as the "final exam bug" the "undead elder bug" and the "sim graduated but won't go home to the original neighborhood bug." Kicky bags get stuck, only to be remedied by bulldozing the lot and Greek members develop "amnesia" where they lose important memories like their first kiss as a teen.
What has EA/Maxis done to resolve these issues. First they said that they couldn't provide a separate downloadable patch, that it was "too hard." A patch would be included in the next EP, Nightlife, effectively coercing consumers to pay out more money to get their game to work. Then as Sims fans expressed their outrage EA/Maxis promised to attempt to make such a patch but it still won't be available until sometime after the release of Nightlife, if ever at all. I was able to rectify my bug issues with third party bugfixes. I appreciate those modders taking the time to make the game playable but it was truly EA/Maxis' responsibility to provide timely support for their game. I am waiting at least a month before I consider purchasing Nightlife because I want to see the following-
1. A free downloadable patch to those who've already bought University and what it will correct
2. What the patch included in Nightlife will correct (hopefully it will be the same as the downloadable patch) and is Nightlife going to cause any new unpleasant messes from code errors
3. EA/Maxis working to treat consumers with more respect; timely support for their product like other software companies (such as Atari and Microsoft)
I never expected the game to be bug free, I simply expected EA/Maxis to have a better attitude about supporting the product they have sold to us. Especially since the errors are of their own making.
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Based on 89 reviews.