Help me choose! Discover University or High School Years?

When it comes to careers and skills, DU is definitely better. Your Sim teen will pick up minimal skills and have to attend class to gain them if you get HSY. On the other hand, I personally prefer Prom and the Amusement rides to ping-pong and keggers.

I would recommend getting both, however. If your teen gets an A in high school and level 4 in 2 skills (I think), they can graduate early and start university while still a teen. Both packs have good clothing for teens and YAs. HSY probably has the better Build/Buy catalog.

Hope this helps.

There are many possible criteria in my opinion. From my viewpoint...

If you plan to buy both of them over time and play long lifespan for teens and older, you may buy high school first and then University. So you can let your same sim have experience with both packs.

But if you want to play the family with the benefit of a good salary. Better get University first. University helps your sim jump start to levels 6-8 of each career related to the degree (faculty) you choose after your sims graduate. Then you will buy High School Years for the children of them.

Comparing each pack from my personal experience.

Discover University

• Pros
  • Broader variety of gameplay. There are 2 universities with totally different vibes and types of activities (art or science), while High School has only one. *You can't make extra university or high school.
  • Many things to do and replayable in different styles of gameplay.
  • Dorm roommates have personalities! Each of them acts differently by both basic traits and roommate archetypes. They may have annoying quirks such as having parties at midnight, being grumpy and sad all the time, doing mischief, etc. But if it's chaotic you want, go for it!
  • Britechester is a majestic and beautiful world. It's like Oxford or Euporean influence.
• Cons
  
  • Even though the world environment is beautiful, the building is not. Also bad in functional. But you can download a better one of your choice from the gallery.
  • As there are many functions in gameplay, there are many bugs too. Recently, there has been a bug with Uni club events. It may be trouble if you play university right now (like me)

High School Years

• Pros
  • If you want to play teens more seriously, this pack has most of the things it should have. Teen (in recent trends) outfits and objects are available for you. In terms of clothes and objects quality, High School Years is better too. You can see it in the trailer.
  • You can now see many more teens in the lot compared to the previous packs most of the spawned sims in the lot are adults (not even young adults)
  • There is an amusement park in the world! Even though it's mostly for visual without function. You can use it for teenage storytelling or more fancy vacations.
• Cons
  • The gameplay becomes repetitive after a few weeks. It's quite boring during teen sims to sit in the class because no special interaction. And there are some bugs and game-flow problems (but these cons are in every pack so you may not mind lol)
  • Beware that special events like proms and graduation ceremonies are still quite buggy until now. Not such great as the trailer shows. Better to check the community reports when you face something that feels wrong.

Extra advice, these EPs are quite big and affect your sims. And sometimes the game mechanics make sims go wrong. But both of them aren't the "save file ruining" like some pack. If you are not the micro-management player. I believe that you will have fun in any pack of them.

You may think it easy like "What do you want to play first?"😄

I would say get both of them if possible but if not , I would go with University because you can send a sim to uni even as an adult or elder. Also, you can sit on skill classes any time for a fee. That being said, none of my sims graduated uni. I like the pack for the other things, roommates, robots, ping pong, kegs, cafeteria and food stands that work nicely with the community space lots from Eco Lifestyle, the world. 

From  Highschool years I like the world with the amusement park, the different bedroom furniture, the EZ window, the ivy ladders, the photobooth, the cafeteria and bobba shop, clothes stand that again work nicely with the community space lots from Eco Lifestyle. Though I prefer the uni cafeteria cause it has nicer food options.  The highschool lot is huge but you can use it to create skilling spaces for the sims and all sims can hang out there outside of school hours. It also has lots of festive type furniture and decorations that can be used for weddings, parties and such. 

Game play wise, I have found High School Years to be quite boring. Beautiful little world comes with it and the hidden carnival is great. But with Discover University, you are playing constantly. There is something happening all the time. Depending on the class load you decide for your sim, it can be quite exciting. So if I had to pick, it would be DU.

I would also like to say that as packs are coming out and changes are made to the game, I am still exploring each of these and probably have more to discover in both. The above was just my opinion of the two game packs. 

All I can answer with is the fun I had when my young adult went to University.  She didn't live on campus, but I had her go to the University Research & Debate times, when they take their turns to debate with the teachers there, & other students.  Also as someone mentioned, the idea of Robots, which I haven't gone into yet. I play long live mode, so I want to send my sim to the learn about Robots. As for High School Years, I don't go into that much yet. sorry for not having lots of info on either. I do think High School has nice furniture & build items. I hope in some way that helps, and doesn't make you more confused. lol  Happy Simming Halisimmer ♥

I think it depends on how you play the game. Do you like focusing on teens in high school, or do you focus more on adults? I do the latter, and I think UNI adds quite a bit to each student's personal development in order of choosing a degree, which results in choosing a focus in their lives, which again will give a few favored careers and probably a unique life based on all this. A high school student might have more fun during school years, but afterwards I don't think the sim will be much affected by those high school years. Like others said, the best go might be to get both packs ;)

I love both worlds, but I think Britechester is prettier and has more variety and options. Copperdale is more secluded and with a different backstory that also feels good.

University life is fun because you can set it up as you like, choosing how many classes to follow per term. I've not played HSY enough to compare.

I think UNI objects are good, but so are HSY. I use objects from both packs a lot. I appreciate CAS from UNI a bit more because they help me making YA sims look younger than Adults, and also my older teens will often use UNI CAS. HSY CAS is good too, but (I find it a bit too fashion-ish for my average teen. It might be better if you play super popular HS students, with an interest for the fashion feature that is included, but I never tried. BB from UNI is a bit more plain and simple, what you would expect from a not so exclusively equipped school (can also be good for low standard hotels, retirement homes, etc).

I never focused a lot on after class activities, but I'll admit the HSY activities might sound a bit more fletched out. I think UNI organizations can play a role in a sim's life also after graduating, but I'm not sure. 

It's a tough choice between the two. I prefer UNI but that might be because it os already well implemented with my game style, and I did not yet explore all sides of HSY.

I prefer university. It is more flexible because sims aged young adult but also adults and elders can attend uni. If you live in a dorm in the University world, it feels very involved with roommates and buildings to go to for classes. But if you prefer your sims can also attend from home or live in a dorm in any world. 

The three careers are nice to have more variety in jobs. All three can be done as work from home careers or rabbit holes. Building robots is fun. 

I also like the building style which is split into a old fashioned classical style and a modern tech style. 

High school years is more repetitive with the downside that there is only one high school lot in the game, no matter what world your sim lives in. And default high-school buildings look awful. The calendar is very cluttered with high-school years events. But the beds and other build buy items look great. 

Be aware that the afterschool activities you mention are limited to age groups. The soccer team and e-sports from DU are only available for uni students, not for teens. The 4 afterschool activities from high school years are only available for teens, not children. Children can only do scouts (seasons) and drama club (get famous) 

I personally like high school years better overall. It’s easier to play Rotationally, and I do like the mining town of Copperdale.  I also have a bit of fun sending my teens to school.  I really like the furniture better in High school years too..  it also comes with bubble tea and being able to build fashions to sell.  It also has the Photo Booth, and some new vending machines.

Discover university does have making Robots though and a few new careers that I liked

if you have both Discover University and High School years, your teens can go to college as a teen after graduating….

I have both and like them both, but I find I use DU much more often. 

HSY is fun if you like playing with teens a lot (I like to use it mainly to get teen romances going that follow them into adulthood). Prom is every week and can get boring after a while. The day-to-day of high school can feel repetitive. For me it's all about socializing teens with other teens, and I like that part because it's hard without HSY for teens to meet other teens. I do like the Trendy shop as meet up place. But I use DU all the time to get my Sims higher in their careers. 

Like others have said the world with HSY is nicer, but I'm not a fan of the high school building. I usually get one from the gallery to sub in. With DU the builds are 'ok' (I like the library and pub), but I usually end up editing the Commons so it has more stuff for students to do together or to make their studying easier (like adding a robotics lab, a test kitchen, etc.).

Bottom line, I find on a day-to-day basis in all my games I use the features of DU more than HSY, but both are fun in their own ways. 🎓

If I had to pick one between the two I'd pick DU because it's one of the EPs I play with the most! I guess it depends on what you want for your Sims!