Can somebody explain to me University Life?

I just downloaded it, and boy am I confused. First off, it rips my Sims from my nice little home in Sunset Valley and shoves me in this University plot. Now I'm forced in a dorm with roommates that insist on playing the stereo in my room when my Sims are sleeping and never wash dishes.

How does the performance system even work? I'll be looking at my progress in my academies throughout the day and it will both lose performance and gain performance within the 5 seconds. What makes it go up and down? I'll be studying, and it'll go down. I'll be walking to my dorm, and it'll go up. I'm so confused

Also, how long does a term last. 12 days, right?

no one term is 5 schooldays and a weekend,just like a normal week
and for the performance system,i am not fully out of it my self lol

here's a big tip for the performance bar - pick the ambitious trait. that trait seems to make that bar rise much faster. that being said, i'm pretty sure that bar is not working the way it was intended. at least i hope it's not, because i think it's rather ridiculous that the bar drops while they're sleeping. i also have noticed that when you first look at it, it seems to be going in the opposite direction of what it should be depending on what your sim is doing at the moment. like when i glance it at while my sim is studying, it will start out saying the performance is dropping then it switches to improving and stays that way until they're done studying. but basically the things that are supposed to raise the performance bar are going to class, lectures (although if you chose to sleep during lecture, it will decrease performance), and class activities, studying, and raising the skills that are related to whatever degree you're working on. also, if you're a phys ed major don't bother using that stupid skeleton outside of the class activity time. using it during class activity time will obviously raise the performance bar, but since it improves the science skill if you use it outside of the class activity time it will make your performance bar drop. another thing i've noticed is that if you've maxed out a skill related to your major and attempt to do something related to that skill, it will no longer improve your performance bar. at least that's what happened to one of my sims who had maxed out their athletic skill and attempted to work out to improve their performance for the phys ed degree.

and if you're not above using cheats and want to guarantee getting an a, then make your sims always work hard during classes and just hold down to ctrl and click the stressed moodlet to get rid of it.. it'll raise their fun bar all the way to 100% when you do that. and if they work hard during all of their classes (and try hard on exam days), their performance bar will raise pretty quickly during the class hours. but like i said, the ambitious trait definitely helps raise the bar faster no matter what degree you're working on.

and like the person above me said, one term is five school days. two days of classes, one day of lecture, one day of class activity, and one day of exams. if you're there for two terms, the performance bar will disappear after all the exams have been taken on friday and your sim can do whatever they want for the weekend without worrying about it affecting their school performance.

Hmm. This seems poorly designed. You're right, there's really no knowing whether the performance bar will raise of lower. It's kind of stupid when you're studying that your performance goes down >_<

You see, I already had a family going. My first Sim is already Level 10 in Cooking and I placed her in a Fine Arts course. Likewise, my second Sim is Level 10 in the Guitar/Painting area and I put her in the Fine Arts as well. So they're already maxed on their skills, but I think you get a boost to your job when you have a degree.

I think I'll just have to hope for the best. They don't seem to want to budge from between 40% and 60% on the performance meter, and I'm afraid that when finals come around I'm going to not do so well.

A nice tip for faster/easier performance is to pick the lowest amount of credits per term. After some careful consideration, I realized that:

-A sim will gain the same amount of performance in one day no matter the number of credits, however, the number of classes they take per day reduces the amount of actual performance they get per class.

e.g. 3 classes per day = 1/3 performance per class where as 1 class per day = 1 whole performance per class.

Taking the lowest credits will make you go to college longer, but you're more likely to have tons of free-time and higher grades if you do it.

Since your sim is more likely to be stressed out on a high-maintenance schedule and is always having to do motive-boosting activities, their grade actually suffers with a high load.

If that's true, then yeah, this is kind of poorly designed.

You see, since they were maxed in their skill already, we got 18 credits, so I chose the option to get the full amount so I could go in one hit. This kind of sucks

Is there a way to go back to you home to check on your other sims? I didn't know it was going to send me to a whole new map and stuff. I also was wondering if a sims free will is affected when they go to collage. Because I enrolled my sim and get him started then left the house for like 2 hours when I came home 3 of his house mates died of hunger the rest were standing outside just fermenting in stink waves, and my guy was sleeping on a community lot Dying of starvation... I don't get it cause when he's home he will make himself food when he get hungry. Maybe his class load was to high? But what about the others?

Whoa, that's odd. I would think it would be like if you switched Active Households and the AI took care of them.

moonpie wrote:Is there a way to go back to you home to check on your other sims? I didn't know it was going to send me to a whole new map and stuff. I also was wondering if a sims free will is affected when they go to collage. Because I enrolled my sim and get him started then left the house for like 2 hours when I came home 3 of his house mates died of hunger the rest were standing outside just fermenting in stink waves, and my guy was sleeping on a community lot Dying of starvation... I don't get it cause when he's home he will make himself food when he get hungry. Maybe his class load was to high? But what about the others?

It works just like it does with World Adventures when you go on vacation and basically freezes the time in your home town. So basically you'll go to university and whatever time it was in your town right before the loading screen for the university town appears, that's what time it will be when you come back from university. There is no kind of progression in your family that is left in the hometown, they'll pick up where you left off. However, if you do have toddlers or babies in the house and send all of the adults to university, you will have to hire a babysitter first because there is a brief time when you leave for university and return from university when you're riding in the moving van in your hometown and aren't on your home lot with the kids. Also, I've noticed that high free will doesn't seem to work like it does regularly when at university. If you don't pay attention to them, they don't seem to just automatically eat, use the bathroom, sleep, etc. And the roommates are all just stupid, I ranted about this in another post. None of them do what they are supposed to do, so you have to constantly deal with listening to the roommates whine about being tired/hungry/etc. That's one of my biggest complaints about this expansion. And if you haven't figured it out yet, LOCK THE DOOR TO YOUR SIM'S PRIVATE ROOM. I made the mistake of not doing this the first time I sent a sim to university and their roommates kept coming into the room in the middle of night and turning on the tv and the stereo and just being generally obnoxious while my sim was trying to sleep.

When I would lock the door, it wouldn't stay locked. It kept opening.