Alright so this is both a bit of a rant and seekin suggestions post.

Very recently I had a teen sim that never rolled a want to go college and since I have a love-hate relationship with uni I opted not to send her. She was a popularity sim with literally no interest in school I did some things to trigger that interest: I let her visit her brothers who were in Uni and had people try and talk to her about school, all to no avail.Then on the day of her transition just before we were to invite friends for her party she rolls -for all of 5 seconds- a desire to go college before quickly rolling a desire to play on the computer. Then after she transitions (at platinum status) she starts crying about never going to college and gets a bad memory even though she did not have an aspiration to go at the time of her transition.

This is to me is a false aspiration and its so frustrating; this sim was not interested in college and it doesn't fit that she would have a bad memory about going to college because she doesn't care. I don't enjoy university enough to send every one of my teens, and the whole pocket time aspect of uni frustrates me, as it halts or slows the storylines of other sims that are connected to my young adults.

How do you all play your rotations? What do you to keep sims ages consistent or at least close? And how do folks play uni? I'm trying to make it different everytime so that I enjoy it but in the end it always feels like a chore.

There is a MATY hack: nocollegeobsession. Keeps sims from rolling college wants and then throwing a fit about it when they don't go.

I agree, I don't like sending every single teen to college. It's really stupid that EAxis wants us to do that - IRL, not everyone does have the money to go to college.

If I am playing a rotation I sort of have a separate rotation for college. My normal place has a rotation and then when the teens there go to college I take time off from the normal neighborhood to play the college rotation. (Does that even make sense?)

It does. I've been starting to think I might send my teens in batches and not play my main hood until they graduate or play a different hood for a break from the University lifestyle.

I'm still trying to figure out my system as playing in rotation is pretty new for me but what I'm doing is using a mod that allows for me to turn off aging on an individual basis and when a sim does not go to University, I just shut off their aging until they have played the equivalent of 4 years of Uni, so that they are still on track with the neighborhood. I just treat them as Young Adults even though they aren't on campus. They can work but they are very limited on what kinds of work they do and how much money they can earn. I don't want them reaching the top of their careers before their siblings even graduate college or that sort of thing.

Here is a link to Christianlov's "Counterfeit Diploma",
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=289704

I don't bother with Uni. I get all messed up with rotation, etc-and I hate trying to remember who's in college and whatnot.

For other mods along this line, you might want to try Insim and search for Squinge's "No College" hacks.

I just have YA Sims return to the neighborhood the same time they left. If they would have aged to adult on Friday evening, they're back that evening or anytime before 6 pm on Saturday.

If I have a couple of teens one or two Sim days apart, I might send one to college when the other is a sophomore. Of course if you play them in separate dorms it makes it rather moot.

For example--Riverblossom Hills: Jacob Martin ages on a Wednesday night, Jules O'Mackey on Friday night. I play the Martin house until Wednesday night, the O'Mackeys until Friday night, then send both teens to college. I typically have Jacob and Jules get married and live with his father, so Jacob moves back home Wednesday evening, I play that house until Friday evening, then move in Jules and have her and Jacob get married. That way it keeps their ages in sync.

If I start out a single Sim as a YA, saving the money from grants makes it so they can afford a nicer house after graduation.

That's how I do university. It also gives me a break from the main 'hood.

I like university because it give your Sims the opportunity to build skills and make friends. Plus they start out higher in a career--they start at the highest (up to Level 9) if they enter a career for which they studied (political science major for a military career, for example).

There have been quite a few threads on time sync and Uni:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=378735
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=403004
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=414050

As well as a rather excellent recent thread on keeping Uni interesting:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=411640

I have a one-day rotation in my neighborhoods. After I finish the neighborhoods and the subhoods, I go to the University, which has a different rotation. Each sim gets a semster in the rotation. I find this system works rather well.

I like to give my Teens the full 14 days of being teens, gives them time to build skills. One thing I don't want is to send one to college after 12 days of being a teen with level 7 Cooking, where if I gave them the extra few days of being a teen, they could have reached Level 8 and gotten the London Culinary scholarship. That's another 750 Simoleons in the bank.

I send teens when they are 7 days away from being an adult. So they have gone through half of the teen phase before I send them.

I usually don't send my Sims to university, honestly, but when I do (some of my richer families would be appalled if little X didn't go!), I send them anytime between one and eight days into the Teen cycle. Usually I send them on their eighth day as a Teen.

I have Cyjon's hack to make each year of University last 48 hours, plus one day for graduation (essentially nine Sim days). I play the Sim through college, graduate them, and then return to the neighborhood. My neighborhood rotates on a weekly basis, so I continue the rotation until nine days have passed in the Sim's home family. Once the nine days are up, I add the new graduate back to the family, and voila! Everyone's still in sync.

I used to use Cyjon's hack but now I use the clock from MATY, which lets you end each semester whenever you want. MUCH faster. If you use a teen who's already got the skill points, they just need to study for an hour or two and go to class maybe once and then you can take their exams. And then I just play the rest of the family/hood for four days to keep it even.

Let me point something out here. This was your sim, who showed no interest in college until it was, as a practical matter, too late.

Why do you think you can salvage this truculent and obstinate little turd? Kill it. Kill it with fire before its asshat genes spread.

Kids these days....you offer them the golden throne and they don't want it until they have to sit on the electric chair.

Use the college clock. You can get them in and out under 5 days depending on how you get their GPA up.
Just remember how many days you played and play it out in the other house hold or use a cheat to get them up in age.

I feel more like there was a default teen aspiration applied rather than a genuine interest on the part of the sim herself. That essentially if she were a real person she would not have been upset at all.

edit> Thanks all round I will be downloading that clock.

Most of my teens roll wants to go to college and 9 times out of 10 I send them, because my uni hood is quite established in terms of accommodation and plentiful interactions with other playable students. Also certain careers such as Art, Natural science, paranormal and showbiz are only available for students who have attended college (unless you use mods to make available to all regardless of education) and since I have lots of teens with the Arts/craft interest (and I also like the showbiz career track) it would seem a shame not to let them go to college to study that.

I just send them for the social aspect really and gaining friends.

I pretty much only use Uni as a way to have my Sim make all the friends they will need to max out a career. If I play Uni without modding the semester length, I just leave it on for an hour and go do chores around the house... my sims will go to class and hang out with people without my help and it's much less boring for me. And since dorms provide food and have sprinklers, I'm usually confident that my idiot sims aren't going to die while I fold the laundry, lol.

Wow! I dread to think what my sim students would get up to if I left them to their own devices. With ACR in my game it's bad enough as it is!

i do the same thing but i use maxmotives and motivedecay false to keep them healthy, as my sims arent smart enough to not die if i walked away and i often leave them on a community lot - more people there ussually, and they will still go to class from there

When I was first posting back at TSR asking for help Jo I thought you were this really nice helpful person, now I come to mod the sims and learn what a perv you are. I'm so disappointed.

Err... calling someone a perv because she uses a mod that allows her sims - which are animated pixels- to "choose" their own romantic interests is a bit much don't you think?

I don't know how she stopped being a nice helpful person because she wants to spice her game up a bit.

Nope, still not seeing it.

Huh? AG Doren, how am I a perv because I have ACR in my game (as do many thousands of other simmers)? I find that pretty insulting actually.

I'm a normal middle-aged woman with healthy interests and old enough to tailor the game how I wish. I don't slam people on here because they indulge in other types of sim behaviour that I don't find interesting.

Pfft! Must say I'm disappointed in your attitude actually.

Edit: thanks wickedblue.

No problem! We were posting at the same time, apparently.

I wondered if I was missing an inside joke between you two after I posted.

lol - actually I was thinking the same thing for a moment!

Oh well, guess I'll shut up from now on about what I do with my sims. Some people are obviously offended. But I refuse to hang out at "adult" sim sites because I do find them rather boring.

Funnily enough I haven't even played the game for about 6 weeks - real life calling and when I have fired up the game I've been 90% building on Sims 3 (I hope that's not considered too pervy )- I still like to read on here what other people are doing.

Nah, don't shut up about what you are doing with your sims. We are all here because we obviously enjoy reading and seeing what others are doing with their sims. Not everyone has to agree or like what any one chooses to do but the person calling others names are the ones in the wrong, not you.