They made the aspirations easier in the same patch that also brought the dirt overlay for sims with low hygiene. I remember this because I was playing a household of sims in the Collector aspiration. After the patch they had all advanced a full tier due to some previous requirements no longer being required. A quick look into my screenshots folder says that was in December 2014 already :o
Edit:
I dug into the patchnotes, and indeed there is this piece from December 16, 2014:
Thanks to great player feedback, we made some pretty important changes to Career and Aspiration objectives. Please take a moment to review your Aspirations and Careers, as some of the objectives have possibly changed. Our main goals with this update were to:
Get rid of objectives that were too specific or repetitive
