My sims are always making the Deans list, getting A+, and getting good money because of it. I was just wondering though, what exactly do you bother buying while in college? Usually the dorm has everything you need, so I always find myself just keeping the money until College is over.

It's good for dates.

After my Sims graduate I use the leftover money to buy stuff and put it in their inventory, so they have more money to start out with. If they're moving back in with a relative, well, that's more money in their family funds.

If I have Sims that are "starting out" after graduating (like I created the students, never played them from teen or younger), then I like to put the green energy sources (Mansion and Garden SP) on their dorm or on their private residence. No bills.

Since the sim doesn't get to keep the money when he leaves - at least in an unmodded game; the $20,000 handout is the same for anybody - I don't see the point in hanging onto it.

The first thing you can spend money on is to get out of the dorm! If you don't like the residences that ship with the game, you can add them from the lot bin or build to suit. The start-up cost of getting into a nice residence is considerable, often over $5,000 simoleans, and then you have to furnish it. I like to keep continuously-running households (I don't have an .xml reader and like to review history periodically, so I don't like to have stories disappear from the game.), and long-running ones like the Greeks can then support large purchases like cars and you can afford to have a few slacker, skip-class-and-buy-lots-of-clothes students as well as your straight-A moneymakers. You can fix up even a modest residence to be a really pleasant place under this system; and you can redecorate with every turnover of tenant without worrying about the cost.

If you have Vacation, you can buy a vacation lot and/or send your sims on spring break; again, a pricey proposition. One of my sims bought an empty vacation lot right before he graduated and was able to take his bride on a honeymoon, equip the lot as a barebones primitive camping site, and come home with enough money left to start fixing up her family's house. This couple would never done this if he hadn't bought the vacation lot ($8,800) with his school money. If I were ever to send one of my Greek houses on vacation in a body, they could stay in the swanky hotel and bring their SOs, because the Greeks accumulate funds like nobody's business, even when I'm deliberately picking brothers out to be bad students and making them barely squeak by in classes.

Buying things you know you're going to need right before you graduate is a time-honored tradition. You can often also throw in a few frills. Once I have students out in the hood, I'm always being practical and ignoring decoration - but it's nice to have one or two pretty art works in a house, or even just some imaginative clutter, and this is a painless way to get it without the nagging sense that you're wasting simoleans.

Good students can also spend like sailors on the people they care about. Give your mom expensive cologne in that brand Dad likes! Buy baby stuff for your impoverished sister! Lavish your date with Mong vases and absurdly tall potted palm trees! Give your kid brother a guitar for his birthday!

University students can hire maids. I haven't done this because I like to have my sims gain their mechanical, cooking, and cleaning points by doing rather than reading and because the idea of students with maids seems absurd to me; but it'd be appropriate for certain types of sims.

Mostly, let your student have these college years as a carefree period when the bills are covered, so you can focus on the DRAMA that University gives you so much time for and not on day-to-day mundane stuff. Get them what they want, not just what they need. Time enough for being practical when you're graduated and back in the real world.

I like to buy extra skill-building objects, like bikes/treadmills, pianos, violins, telescopes...I also upgrade a lot of the furniture and renovate the place with new walls and floors if I feel inclined to do so. One time I had a ridiculous amount of money left over so I gave all of my students nice bookcases, telescopes, and random instruments before they graduated.

Computers, easels, guitars, party lights, pinapple drinks, clothes, coffee.

There is one exception: if your sim(s) has/have over and above the $20k each in household funds when they graduate, they will take that amount back. To take an example, if you had a three-sim household who had managed to earn $50k, the first sim to graduate would head back with the base $20k (50k/3 = 16.7k), while the other two would head back with $25k each (50k/2 = 25k, taken away from the household funds this leaves sim three also with 25k).

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I play a game with no20khandouts, so any money earned by my sims at uni is taken with them to fund their post-uni life. Generally speaking, unless they drop out they tend to have enough money to get a small apartment of their own.

That's interesting. Will it ever happen if I never leave the house empty? Because when a sim moves out without leaving campus - joins the Greek, moves in with a different roommate, two sims move from the dorm to a resident without the other playables in the dorm - the bulk of the money is left in the original house.

I believe the general rule is that when a sim moves out, they take (I believe) 10%. Now, I'm not sure if that is also applicable in an unmodded game, where the graduate would receive $20,000.

For example, I had a Greek house with 6 members in it who were all seniors at the same time. When it came time to leave, I invited 2 Freshmen to move in to keep the house going, and then the first sim to graduate left with the most money. After the last person left, the house funds had been dwindled down to 1-2k, and then it was like starting over with a new class.

Now, I'm not sure if this is basic gameplay behavior or if this is caused by a mod--I've got so many mods related to finances and school/work in order to make gameplay harder, and I have had them for years so it's hard to remember what exactly does what.

I do know I have the no20khandout, though, because I don't know about you guys, but when I graduated college, all I got was an eviction notice from my mother and $28,000 worth of student loans. I certainly didn't get $20,000 free!

ETA: On topic, I generally use the money to furnish the house or plan a spring break. I also use christianlov's wallet token controller to funnel away some of the money into bank accounts for the sims so that they can withdraw it after they've graduated; since I use no20khandout, they need to save as much money as possible.

I think an umodded game when you move out it splits it down the middle doesn't it?

Nope; when Sage Ann and Ernest left the dorm, leaving Sadie and Gavin behind, they had less than half the funds to start up their residence than Sadie and Gavin had to maintain their nearly-expense free life in the dorm. When three more sims moved in and then Sadie moved out, having graduated, the extra income was enough for her to get into the smallest residence and furnish it with a table, chairs, and double bed - which was really all she needed for her post-graduation orgy; but by moving as a unit, the people she left behind in the dorms were able to afford the Craftman's Pride, with a hefty move-in cost (between $6-7K, I think) and still furnish it and enclose two dormers in the attic for an additional bedroom and bath.

Forgive me for not citing numbers; I can't remember them for five minutes, let alone the year+ it's been since then, and it's the last time I tried to move somebody out to set up a new household at University, because it was so hard to tell when the funds available were sufficient to let the movers do so.

I remember one time I had a Sim graduate with about $25K in family funds. When I moved that Sim back to the home neighborhood (without buying anything with that money), that's the amount they started out with...$25K. She'd been living in a private residence.

Now if I'd bought stuff with her $25K and put it in her inventory, she would have had $20K to start with...and selling off the stuff would have given her $45K.

I f I don't intend to keep that money for my Sims when they move back to neighbourhood, I use the earned funds for upgrading their dorms/rented houses/greek houses, starting from changing walls/floors and ending with furniture, I often pick a theme for refurnishing the place. If I have few playables living together and they all do good in their studies, then there's enough funds to redo the whole lot and even the outdoors before they all graduate.

If I want my Sims to keep that money, I buy some random stuff and put in their inventories. If a Sim is meant to live on his own, it's very useful since I have a no20khandout mod.

I delete the uni money with cheats. It's unrealistic to be paid for studying, especially so much that you can buy a house afterwards. (I wish I lived in a sim world)

I found a few uses for the money earned in college:

1) Craft benches. The college years are long, and it gives the sims plenty of downtime to learn how to build robots, arrange flowers, and make toys. The toys are especially great, because the young adults can play with everything they make -- except for that whirly seat -- and quickly restore fun lost by assignments. (If you don't like seeing grown-up sims playing with toys, put a bubble blower and/or a juice keg nearby so they'll have an excuse for their shennanigans )
2) Buying off enemies. Some low-nice sims are rays of sunshine, while others are doom itself. A little cash on hand keeps the trashcan upright and the roaches away.
3) Repairs. Sure, influencing cow mascots to repair the computer is fun, but sometimes the term papers won't wait and the influence points just aren't there.

My sims leave all the money behind. The dorms are rich.

Hmm, I'm not sure -- I would suspect that if a sim graduated from their original house, so long as it has more than $20k/sim, they would take the extra money with them. It might be worth having them take their 'share' of money from their original house in the form of statues/paintings in inventory and sell them when you get to the new house to avoid massive amounts of money piling up.

My colleges have tuition, so some of my simmies use money from the dean to lower their debt. Otherwise they do what real college kids do -- buy junk : D

Some invest in things where they'll eventually see a return (crafting stations, gardening) while others want to spend it on video games, tv's, hooka-- I mean bubble machines, and stereos.

Some save up so they can rent a house or apartment after freshman year, and others save up so they'll be able to get their own apartment after graduation (I love the sims who instantly want to MOVE OUT, FIND OWN PLACE, GET JOB IN X, and BUY A CAR, after aging up xD).

Lately, my game seems to mirroring the real world though. I have recent graduates who can't seem to find work in the field that they want, and the ones who saved up are doing a little better - or at least, living in better places. They're all working menial jobs to pay rent, and one's thinking of just joining the military for awhile.

my sims pay tuition they pay for groceries if they dont live in the dorm and pay a separate bill for water and electric to that company they buy extra things to stock their dorms with, pay for dates, go shopping, some adopt pets or take care of the greek house pet. they pay greek fees if in one. if they are rich they have maids. they go on winter and spring break. if in the dorm they contribute a fee to making the building look and run better same for the greek houses. They pay other sims for doing thier homework sometimes. rich sims donate new buildings for the campus that are strictly community lots. the owned businesses are owned by already graduated sims who pay the campus rental space to have thier business there. the university does give out scholarships but its mostly up to the parents or teen to come up with all the money.
if money is leftover by the time they graduate n some have saved they get a small plot of land and start building thier homes or get an apartment downtown or rent thier house.

Ah, what else I use the earned money in college, for Popularity Sims - I sometimes set a goal to keep a Sim at a Dean's List to get the max 1.200 + working as a personal coach + digging for treasure if necessary, and then by the time Sim is about to graduate, I use that money to purchase a house and start a Greek House in honour of that Sim, it's like he/she is a founder of Uni's fraternity/sorority and engraves his/her name in Uni's history. Which I think any Popularity Sim would love to have

It'd be sweet to have the option to go to school and work!

And I'm not talkin' about that job you can get working in the Cafeteria in the dorms.

Yeah, hacker do what creators don't do! ^_^

A lot depends on what other Expansion Packs you have. The only way my college grads can take the money with them is if I have them buy stuff and put it in their inventory. ( Which I always do.) Then they can sell it as soon as they get back to the neighborhood. Otherwise they only get the usual 20k.

I split a percentage of it and use it to buy goodies for the Sim once he or she leaves Uni. I tend to stick to items such as computers, desks, TVs, sofas and fridges, since many houses don't have these once the SIm moves. If it's a Maxis pre-made, and my Sim has either the same object or a better version, I sell either the duplicate or the cheaper object I don't want when the Sim moves in.

A portion of it remains in the dorm to "pretty" it up or to add a hot tub or expand the building. And some just stays in the bank.

I generally force my sims to pay fees for college (that is, I reduce their funds at the start of every semester to simulate the costs). Tuition + books usually costs about $700 per sim, per semester. (Although sometimes they get lucky and find used books, which cost less.) Which means first semester freshmen without scholarships usually end up -$200, which I think is a tad bit more realistic. And then, of course, there's dorm fees A sim can end up in some pretty hefty debt if they don't mind their grades and funds!

Anything left over from the fees either goes to paying for neat things/gadgets, or gets put aside for when they move back home (since I play with the "no 20k handouts" hack).

My Uni sims always want OFB or FT crafting items. Please may I have a robot bench? Please may I have a sewing machine? Those take a semester's grants, or two. Then there's always 'Let's go on vacation" which will drain plenty of money. The Greek houses, which many of my sims join, start out seriously under-equipped for skilling, beds, etc. Plus what Greek house doesn't have four or five vehicles in front? Or I have them buy a business back home.
If you have Inteen, you can have them go to school and work, which is what Francis J. does (and why he's a B student--two day semesters don't leave a lot of time for making up for missing classes for a job). Or you can hire college sims at owned businesses, which is, I think, a Business Runs You feature. A word of warning--the class schedule and finals don't change just because your sim is at work. It's really easy to miss the time of the final and get them on academic probation.

I Sims don't live in dorms; they rent a house. I put a driveway in and use it to place cars, which they take home in inventory.