University and Rotation play help

I turn aging off for everyone and I only play with the sim at university until they get their diploma. Then I continue in my rotations.

It is not easy to rotate while a sim is studying at uni. And having aging on.

Also, in order to have two or more sims studying at uni you need to send them there separately and if they are not going to visit different universities then they can not live in a dorm houses. They need to live in their one place.

"DoloresGrey;c-17516142" wrote:
I turn aging off for everyone and I only play with the sim at university until they get their diploma. Then I continue in my rotations.

It is not easy to rotate while a sim is studying at uni. And having aging on.

I do this too.

I turn aging off when they're in university, but if I want to send in somebody later, I'll play through to right before grades are shown (ie, usually I send my sims to uni so that their last day is Friday) - after the last one takes their final, but before grades are officially released at 6, I'll switch to another house - they get whatever grades they would have gotten and I can add others to their same lot, go to a different lot, or play with sims who aren't at university yet - the only thing I can't do is swap back and forth between sims while they're in the middle of a term... I tried that once and it was a disaster.

Rotational play with university definitely presents some challenges.

My typical rotations are in 5 day intervals, so with a university term taking a week or more, it can throw off balanced aging, so turning off aging at least some of the time seems to be necessary.

Some other frustrations and challenges I've encountered include that once you complete a semester it will ask you to re-enroll... Problem is, if you enroll immediately and then rotate, they will continue with that semester while you're away. They may very well fail courses which causes issues or complete courses, which is also problematic if you want to play out the next semester when you return. Therefore, you end up needing to not re-enroll immediately, but that will sometimes cause the move out of university housing prompt to occur, so you have to move your sim into some other lot in another world until you're ready to play their next semester, at which point you have to move them back in.

Also, the OP had questions about unplayed sims in university. You can't have them enroll without playing them first. So, you do need to play those sims briefly to have them apply and enroll. At that point you can have them move into university housing and change their status back to unplayed. The problem I've noticed though is that unplayed sims don't make progress on their degrees. You therefore may need to go back into those households every rotation to get them enrolled in their next semester. The problem with this, as mentioned above, is that there is no guarantee they will actually successfully complete their credits, so it could take forever for them to actually get enough credits to graduate this way, if they ever do at all. The only sure way to have sims progress and complete their degree seems to be playing them.

@BK747 Very insight full. It's too bad that unplayed sims can't seem to do well in University, that is a flaw in EA's system. I have gotten unplayed sims to at least apply for Uni (by playing them but haven't got them to the actual University yet) I was hoping that using the club system to have them all in one or more dorms then leave them unplayed or have a sim in my rotation in that dorm.
I wonder if the modders have been able to solve this situation. I know if I was going to Uni I would want to have my friends go and succeed too.
I have a hard enough time to get played sims through Uni (using cheats to never let them sleep lol) and don't need to play all their friends and cousins too.

I've been exploring this more recently, but honestly it's a bit wonky. I currently plan to play/control any sims going through university together and I just stagger it out.

I've found that I can play a group of different sims in the same dorm. If I try to switch dorms or have some of them go to one dorm while the other does something else, that's just buggy frankly. I just tried it and it did not work. I decided to just continue playing one household and withdrew the other sims from uni for now. If I play with a group again, I need to just plan on keeping them in the same dorm the whole time.

They were definitely a challenge and had varied grades partly because their schedules were all chaotic and I wouldn't always be notified about the start of class. One or two sims are very manageable, but a larger group is going to end up with some sims with less than stellar grades. Those sims were also in athletics which was a challenge. I would only enroll sims in athletics with a lighter academic schedule in the future.

I was ok with not having everyone end up as valedictorians so I rolled with it. One sim failed several classes despite doing all of his work so I'm not sure he'll go back to uni at all which I'll work into his story. I think part of the issue is that with so many sims, they would sometimes be late to class.

The mechanics of rotational play for DU could definitely be better. I'll work around them to some degree but it means staggering when households go and sometimes using withdrawals if I want to make changes.

I will say, it was pretty fun having a bunch of them in one house, so much drama. A sim couple that were established were making out in the pub and another in the group who had never shown any interest in one of them got so upset. I guess she had flirted with him once while I wasn't looking. She got so moody and they started fighting and being awkward all the time around each other. That's part of why I needed to ultimately break them up as a household of roommates but it was realistic and not too boring.