Hi everyone !

I'm building a brand new University and I need your help. I lack inspiration for building it so i'm asking you : What can I build in this brand new university ? What do you build in yours ?

(With only UNI, so no restaurants or any others lots that need later EPs… I want it to be UNI only for now, and CC-free…)

There already is :

- 7 dorms

- 13 houses

- 1 commercial lot with bar, coffee, clothes, cell phones, video games, magazines, grocery

- 1 library with computers

- 1 bar with bubbles

- 1 bar with a scene for musicians

- 3 parking lots

- 1 administrative building

- 1 pool with gym

- 1 military initiation center

- 5 parks

- 1 greenhouse

- 1 building where art classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- 1 building where acting classes and political science classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- 1 building where economics classes and math classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- 1 building where biology classes and physics classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- 1 building where phylosophy classes and psychology classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- 1 building where literature classes and history classes are taught (with teachers offices)

- of course 1 secret society

I know I can build more dorms but I lack inspiration for something else, and there will be no greek houses at the beginning, I want greek houses to be made by my playable Sims when they will be students… So what else ? Any ideas ?

Thank you :-)

You could have a medical building and a police academy building. These are two I have added to mine.

What a good idea ! Thank you, I never would have thought by myself.

That sounds like plenty to me. But you don't have any outdoor lots except parking lots, which for my money are sheer wastes of space. A bookstore, a coffee shop with a mic for reciting poetry, a park, a diner, a no-tell motel, and something really funky and peculiar would be better uses of those lots, imho. There could also be an open sports field, and something that functions primarily as a landmark, ala Sim State Tower.

Examples of quirky and peculiar - a dive bar with a pool and drinks. A food joint with an attached unrelated service (here in San Antonio we have a restaurant/bar/car wash/laundromat/ice cream stand. It's great). A vacant lot with nothing on it but a bonfire and a fruit punch keg. You know, the kind of thing college students would actually use.

Make sure you have plenty of public places to woohoo! Put hammocks in the park! A sauna in the gym! Photobooths and hot tubs everywhere!

I already have 5 parks with chest, coffee, barbecue and so on, I will wait for FreeTime to have an open sports field, and what a good idea, the bonfire, I will put some on the parking lots !
You gave me soooo many ideas ! Woohoo everywhere is something I did not consider but so many possibilities, the no-tell motel is my favorite idea, now I absolutely NEED one ! Thank you thank you thank you !!

What about an amphitheatre? Perhaps the local students use that as one of their favorite partying hangouts, and by "law" (voted by the student government, obviously! ), there must always be a juice keg on the property at all times.

How about a student activities center? Where I live, there's a private uni nearby, and they have a building that has the student activities center, cafeteria, bookstore, and a nice outdoor-eating place with a fountain all plopped in the center of the campus. It's quite nice, actually.

Sports! Where are the sports fields? Soccer, football, baseball, etc... I'm not into sports at all, but it seems to me that a lot of universities are obsessed with it. At the same uni I mentioned earlier, they have a big section near the dorms which are mainly sports fields, the gym, an indoor basketball court, and a pool which is used for both casual swimming and polo tournaments.

Perhaps a nice big lake made via the pond tool would be a nice addition, too? I can imagine that Sims would like to hang out there. While they can't boat on it, there could be a dock for fishing and some picnic tables.

I can't think of anything else, but I hope this helps.

There's some pretty good ideas in this old thread.

This thread might also give you some good University ideas, and you should also definitely look at some of the creations that showed up in the old Campus Constructors contest, as well as some of the creations that popped up during last month's upload Theme.

I'll second that suggestion. I've added a [soccer/European football] field to the Sim State University campus -- with showers, bathrooms and a few vending machines -- because colleges and universities are big on collegiate-level sports, and also because some college Sims love sports (even ones who don't have Sports as their One True Hobby) and not every Sim knows how to get to Dreamy Fields.

Alas, no matter how many times you place two Goal of Paul nets directly facing each other, or how far you separate them, your Sims will never play an actual full-field soccer game. Every rose has its thorn. I still have full-length soccer fields, though, just for the sake of appearances.

My campus used to have a similar lot with a boatload of pine trees and a few log-rolling pits, because log-rolling pits are Sports items too. Maybe Sim State University's in Canada or the United States' Pacific Northwest, maybe it's not. But they had log-rolling all the same, at least in my little Simmy universe.

I still haven't ascertained if skating rinks are Sports or Fitness, but my SSU campus also has a two-story skating rink building right around where the log-rolling grove used to be. Because ice is heavier than wood, the ice rink's on the bottom floor and the roller rink's on the top. But that's just me being a stickler for laws of physics which don't necessarily apply in Sim Earth.

Hee, thanks for the trip down memory lane Zar, I was a judge on that contest. There were some smashing buildings done in that contest and a few are for upload here.

Don't have any ideas for you, just wanted to say that I really like the look of your university. I would never have thought about using the same exterior for many of the buildings, but it creates quite a nice cohesive feel. I actually kind of wish I could get it, and I don't download hoods, ever :P

I noticed that there are 5 parks - very nice. Your hood looks great.
What I have in my own hood is hobby clubs for students - I have a music club, art club, film and literature club, nature club, games club, sport club, geek club, mechanical club, science club and a coffee drinking club. These clubs, especially the coffee club, are very busy in my hood. I also have a row of small shops and a row of bigger shops.
I also have several open stages in parks where my students can busk for extra money.

I use the same template for all my dorms, because I find it convenient. It is a large square building, with downstairs refectory, library, dance/chess area, and gymnasium. Upstairs there are six 4x3 student rooms, each with en-suite bathroom, and a music area with piano, guitar, bass and drums.

In my present university, Plato's Academy, the four dorms are these variations on the basic dorm template: the Stoics have sombre stone floor and walls; the Epicureans have soft carpets and painted walls; Sappho's Ladies' College has dreamy blue-and-white furnishings (the ladies all study Sappho's poetry); Aphrodite's House is in pink and white, and the gymnasium is replaced by a fully-fitted double bedroom, since the trainee priestesses will all need practise in the arts of love. From this you will conclude that students on arrival choose which dorm suits their bent: Knowledge sims go to Stoics; Popularity sims go to Epicureans; family sims go to Sappho's; and Romance sims go to Aphrodite's.

Outside the dorms I have a sports field, a library, a students' union, and Athene's temple, the Parthenon. There are no Greek houses, because they bore me. I enjoy playing University.

Like some kind of outdoor concert lot? Like the ones in Showtime. That would be quite cool. It already looks fine and good enough to me but if you're really looking for more

I think you have a fair number and variety of lots there and it would work well as a university.

The only thing that is missing for me is the one thing I always build in universities: an Accommodation Office lot - I hate to blow my own trumpet but I wrote a guide here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=514322
which explains what that is, why you would want to build one and what to include.

It looks lovely!!

I know you said no greek houses, but is it worth having a couple of larger residences which have the potential to be greek houses, or do you want them to be built from scratch?

I would also add a student union, but that's a UK perspective - the student union would usually have such things as meeting rooms, a lounge with pool or darts or arcade machines, perhaps a bar, a trophy cabinet showing prestigious past students or sporting achievements and a large space which can be used for various events - perhaps it changes every so often. With CC you could add a bank branch.

I always make a public cafeteria, and have a mixture of halls (dorms) - some catered (with a dorm cook cafeteria), usually with single rooms on a corridor and a common room, and some self-catered, divided into separate flats for 3-5 sims each with bedrooms coming off a common room + kitchen set up. These are harder to play, though. You could play them with dummy levels.

You need to make sure you have at least a couple of date locations, including one which is cheap and cheerful, and one which is really special. Somewhere to take the parents when they come to visit is a good idea, too. These might be already included in what you already have. I might consider creating a restaurant which can be upgraded to functional if OFB or Nightlife is present.

If you're into admin type things, you could add a medical office where students can register with a GP and get check ups and advice. And how about an exam hall, so you can imagine where they are all taking those final exams! Though, if you had built a sports hall, you could pretend they are being held there.

Your "UK perspective" sounds suspiciously identical to my United States university's Union... I have a feeling that's a fairly standard part of any large-scale campus, anywhere in the world.

Don't forget somewhere to buy groceries for the self-catering Sims. This can be a little store in the Student Union, or added to a shop selling something else, so you do not need to make a separate lot for that unless you want to do so.

I also would urge you to consider the merits of an IT building, with lots of computers, for those students without easy access to a computer at their own accommodation (or who really, really need to find someone to play LAN games with). Edit: Though with the library, that's not as essential than I'd thought at first glance.

Aha fair enough I wasn't sure if it was a universal thing or whether it had a different name, or what