I haven't played Uni in a long time but if I am not mistaken, its 3 days each semester x 8 semester! So 24 days. So I play maybe 3 weeks and 4 days in the regular neighborhood.

We're not saying that people who don't have higher degrees of education are going to die younger, period. There's a whole variety of factors at play there (not the least of which is the fact that the majority of higher-educated individuals have better living conditions than, say, a high school dropout. Quality of life is a bigger factor.

Besides, the stats are probably that university adds 1.78 years onto your life or something stupid like that. That's not a big enough difference to get all worked up over.

I have to add that my dad had a 6th-grade education, yet made a lot of money as a meatcutter in the late 60s until he became disabled. My mom had a college education...and she's unemployed. Her last job was at an answering service. My husband and I--high school diplomas, yet we're doing all right. We're not rich but we're not on Skid Row.

Seems that nowadays education is so dumbed down that employers are raising the standards. You might have been able to have been hired with only a high school diploma 20 years ago; now they want degrees.

Even with degrees they want experience for entry level jobs!!

My boyfriend graduated in December with an economics degree and they all ask for experience for entry level jobs. Even the crappy jobs wont hire him :/

I have an ageing mod (sorry I forget who made it) which makes toddlers 5 days, children and teens 14 days each and adults 45 days. I also have a mod that makes I Uni semester = 1 day. So I play 1 day = six months, so toddlers are aged 1 1/2 to 4, children are 4-11, teens are 11-18. I play 1 day rotations and one day in each uni household after playing one day in each household in the main hood, so sims are at Uni for the 8 days, 4 years. For sims who don't go to college, after 8 days of adulthood I use sim blender to reset them back to the first day of adulthood so that if I had twins and one went to uni but one didn't they'd still age to elder at the same time.

Sorry if that didn't make any sense; it's hard to explain.

I play two semesters per one day in the main hood but I also have a mod that alters the age-lengths (and also one that alters the semester lengths) so it's not perhaps a good match for anyone else. I find the sims missing from the main hood for four days works out fairly well for me in keeping age cohorts in line (with the ones who didn't go to university).

I was actually thinking about that seeing that my sims are aging pretty slowly in Uni and their parents are aging too, but I'm afraid that they won't live to see their grandchildren, all elders! :S

I just do three days equals to two years in university.

Three days is how long my rotations are and Ive also did a custom age mod that someone put on here so my elders should be living a little longer and be able to at least meet one of their granchildren.

It depends. Since I use TwoJeff's College Adjuster to send the college student to their finals the minute they they have an A or A+, its not a set 3 days for each semester. I do more with calculations on age of the college student verses the age of his/her siblings.

In Sims 2, the Sims that go to college start off higher up on the career ladder than the one's that don't go to college.


In real life my Master's Degree is getting in my way of getting a job "you have a Master's Degree, why are you applying here?" My Master's Degree is in Counseling, but the Counseling field took a huge hit with the American Recession, and most of the time clients have to choose between food and rent, and counseling isn't even close to the top of their list. The private agencies are struggling and laying off Counselors, and the state funded agencies took a hit when the State reduced funding to those agencies. I've been applying for jobs in other areas, but the Master's Degree in Counseling gets in the way most of the time.

I use two-day rotations, so I don't really need to calculate Uni time.

I also use Cyjon's semester changes, so one rotation is one year at University.

As I send ALL of my teens to college, I don't try to match up college teens vs non-college teens. I base most of my days of rotation on the childrens' aging, however, which averages out to about four sim days in the neighborhood. I'll play a semester of uni per rotation, but keep teens out of college long enough for their older siblings to have completed at least one year (two semesters = two rotations) of uni. So far it has worked pretty well.

I play with one day rotation cycles in my main hood but two semester rotations in my college hood. I have a mod that make one semester 24 hours. This works pretty well for me, except if I have families in university with children. my solution is to have the parents go to a community lot in the university hood for the day while leaving the kid(s) at home with a nanny. They return home when they have 5 hours until the final. If it is too close to 6 for my liking I use the sethour cheat to insure the child(ren) only age once per University rotation. I could have just changed everyone to a two day rotation, but some families are boring and I can only manage one day with them.

EDIT: As for teens I send all of my teens to college. However in an old neighbor hood I just didn't let sims go to college until they were 4 days from adult. (So they were teens the 4 rotations their classmates where in college)

Last edited by beafish123 : 9th Jul 2012 at 05:42 PM.

I play in week-long rotations, generally, and I like to keep ages in sync as much as possible. However, in most of my families, not all kids in a household go to college, so keeping the ages of siblings who do go to college more or less in sync with those who don't can be a problem. What works best for me is to send college-bound teens to college when they are five days into teenhood and then play uni households for two college years per 7-day rotation and to hack Uni so that each semester is two rather than three days long. So in rotation one, the uni household gets played for four semesters -- which is 8 days, not seven, but it's the best I can do. Then in the next rotation they finish out their college career. This keeps college kids more or less in age-sync with their non-college siblings, although sometimes I have to add or subtract a day or two from some of them.

In big neighborhoods with lots of households, I play in four-day rotations so that I can get through them faster. I picked four days specifically because that's the length of a college year in my game. Thus, it makes age-syncing easier.

I'm just in the process of restarting a mini-Megahood (Pleasantview, Strangetown, Veronaville & Bluewater Village, but with all the households living in Pleasantview) so I've been thinking about how to do university rotations this time around. In the main 'hood I play one day rotations (because I have a lousy attention span! :-D)

I decided that I would send teens to university when they have 3 days to go before becoming adults. I will then play each semester at university as being equivalent to one day in the main 'hood. The time they have to party after their final final exam will also be equivalent to one day in the main 'hood. This means that they will be away for 9 days main-'hood time. If I had twins, and one went to university and one didn't, the one who didn't would have been an adult for 6 days when the one who did returned to the main 'hood, so I add six days onto returning university students' ages when they get back to the main 'hood. I use Simblender to do this.

I have aged a few sims down to teen and sent them off to university then used the College Adjuster to change them to the correct semester. So Kent Capp, Chester Gieke, Jason Larson and Jodie Larson are all just starting their 4th semester (as that matches up with 29 days to elder according to my rotation system) and Ajay Loner is just starting his final semester (as that matches up with 25 days to elder according to my rotation system). Tank Grunt will be starting university on a military scholarship in one day's time.

My rotation system basically means that some teen/adult ages are equivalent to young adult "ages", as measured in semesters:

Teen - 3 days 'til adult = just starting university (first semester)
Teen - 2 days 'til adult = second semester
Teen - 1 day 'til adult = third semester
Just Adult (29 days 'til elder) = fourth semester
Adult - 28 days 'til elder = fifth semester
Adult - 27 days 'til elder = sixth semester
Adult - 26 days 'til elder = seventh semester
Adult - 25 days 'til elder = eighth semester
Adult - 24 days 'til elder = free time after final exam (graduation
Adult - 23 days 'til elder = back to main 'hood, age returning graduates up by 6 days = 23 days 'til elder

This does mean that I'll need to be careful if I have sims drop out - I can only add days to their age in factors of 3, so they can only drop out after the 3rd and 6th semesters. If they drop out after the third they'll be just adults when they return to the main 'hood, if they drop out after the sixth I'll add three days to their age so they'll be 26 days from elder. I suppose that if they get kicked out at a different point in time I can just keep them in the sim bin until the main 'hood reaches a point where the number of days I'd have to add to their age to synchronise them is a factor of 3. Or stick them on a tiny lot with just a phone and not play them, so that they can still be called by their family and friends....

I haven't actually tried this out yet, so I'll have to wait and see if it actually works! I use Inteen, so sims can have babies in university, so I'll have to figure out how to do baby/toddler ages as well, as otherwise they'll be aging 3 days for every day in the main 'hood.... Any suggestions about that would be appreciated! :-) I will pause pregnancies so that sims are pregnant for 3 semesters (9 days), as that matches up with 3 days in the main 'hood, so probably most babies will be born after their childbearing parent has graduated anyway (I would say mother, but it could be their father if it's a half-alien baby).

I try and keep to a simple system as I have tried more complicated methods and just mess them up. I wanted something that made sense to me that I could remember without too much hassle.
So now I play all my rotations by the season, and use the simwardrobe season adjuster if I move anybody, I also have a day adjuster to keep the correct day at each house regardless of moving. I have a double aging mod so toddlers are 8 days (1-5), children are 16 (5-12) and if I allowed it teens could have 30, but that messes up my age calculations of one day = 6 months and is just way too long for my liking. So teens get to be teens for 10 days (12-17 years old) I don't have babies in uni as I figure that is just too complicated. I also have hacks so YA can do uni from home or just live out their YA lives at home or independently and do no uni work, aging them with the blender when it is time for them to be adults. Uni is 24 days (which equals 12 years!) which is really way too long compared to the other ages. In my rotation hood I try and make it two days per semester (16 days) and even that equals 8 years. (18 to 26 years) I may yet let YA in the main hood have babies if they want them. In my mind sim pregnancy lasts 18 months... poor them. I don't see any other way of reconciling the three days with my 1 day = 6 months without doing my head in, so 18 months it is. They are sims not people so it makes sense to me in a warped kind of way. Babies I age at two days as that = 1 year.

1 Sim day is actually a year right?

I believe so unless you have any other aging mods that totally change how long each stage lasts and therefore might be calculated a bit differently.

I don't really think that a sim day corresponds to a year. I guess they roughly do, but then stuff like pregnancy lasting 3 days and sims being YA's for 24 days kind of ruins it! And seasons being 5 days long. Also, sims are teens for 15 (?) days and only adults for 29.... I changed the ages in my game so that they correspond more closely with human years, but I still have pregnancy lasting 3 days. If I'm writing about sims I measure the passing of time in yeardays - their lifespan is measured in yeardays and so is the general passing of time in the 'hood. That makes it clear (to me, and to anyone who reads) that one sim day is not equivalent to one human year in my game... :-)

Sim days are variable even in terms of a sim lifespan. The time clock runs differently on vacation lots and on University lots, for example. I take eachday as a composite of a lot of days and play as I'm comfortable. What's the point of stressing about it?

I think I have the ultimate solution (sort-off, for myself):

- 1 sim day is a sim year.
- if a sim is pregnant, let aging be off, since sims should be pregnant for less than a year, so they shouldnt grow up.
- in uni, a year there is a year in the base hood.

Right now I do one semester in Uni per each sim day that passes. Thinking about switching to two semesters per main neighborhood day.

I kind of do it like this, yes.
I think that is the easiest and simplest way.
And besides that think of what approaches most realistic life.
What I don't do is stressing about it.

I changed the way I do uni. I got that hack that halves the time spent there and there is only one semester per year. Having played with it for a while, I'm finding I like it better. Not particularly because it shortens the time but because I'm finding that for a sim to do well, even a born in game sim, they have to work really hard to get an A (just like I did, dammit) and, thus, I am getting a lot more sims getting lower grades which I feel is far more realistic. This is pleasing me. Anyway, I'm now playing one semester per day in the main hood and there are only four semesters to do which means uni sims only take time out for four days which I'm finding fits quite well with hood rotation and progression.

I've only just started playing a rotation system for the first time so it's a learning curve for me.

At the moment i play 2 sims days in each household in the main hood then once i've finished a rotation i go to the uni hood and play each household for a sim 'year' of uni, then back to the main hood. It seems to be working pretty well at the moment but no one has graduated yet so we shall see how it goes in the future, may have to change it.

Which hack would that be? I have the college adjuster but with that I have to remember to keep setting hours and I get it messed up. A hack that set the hours for every one the whole time would be great. Uni time compared to hood time even with double aging is doing my head in.