@Maniac4u with sims 2 builds you create on lots in the different neighborhoods and sub-hoods, like your dorm for the university, don't transfer when you start in a new main neighborhood. So whenever you load into a main neighborhood you never played your basically starting over. If you wanted to place the dorm you built into the university hood there is a way. You would need to go back to the neighborhood you created the dorm in and move the lot to the bin, if i am remembering correctly. I can go in sims 2 tomorrow and double check and if i am wrong can give proper instructions to help as it is 12am here and I should really be in bed lol.
oh and the changelotzoning cheat can be tricky did you make sure that you had entered boolprop testingcheatsenabled true from the neighborhood screen, this is how you enable cheats for sims 2, once it's enabled go onto your lot and enter the changelotzoning cheat than leave the lot and it should work, again this is if I am remembering correctly. i'll double check this for you too tomorrow.