I made a few regular houses based on various parties I'd been at in college, then converted them to commercial lots so they'd be like on-campus house parties. Then added a few different venues and bars, stuff like that. I even made a huge apartment building based off the one I lived in at Bradley University. A quad was a lot of fun to build, and play around in. I kind of wish there was a way to create an actual class building, where you could send your sim in a door, and it would raise a specific skill after you're in there for a while, so you could socialize in the class building.

What great ideas but for the class idea you can send a sim to do skilling or learn badges while they are there.

I tried to replicate my own university town, first creating the streets in SimCity 4 and then converting that into an in-game map for Sims2. The streets were the hardest part because in real life they use funny angles that the SimCity4-Sims2 conversion process won't accept. Some of the buildings are architecturally impossible to recreate in Sims 2,, so I have to employ a lot of...interpretation. I turned one of the oldest buildings on campus (which is used for important guest housing and for society initiations) into a little library/study hall place. In addition to functional buildings (dorms, library, shops), I've also been building lots which serve no purpose in the Sims 2, like a laundromat. It has a couple of arcade machines for fun, though. When building an in-game university, both in-game functionality and neighborhood appearance are important to me. This is why across the street from the gym, I have a lot which is nothing but a parking lot. While it has no purpose in-game, when I am looking at the neighborhood its presence near several large structures conveys the sense that yes, this is an actual place where people drive cars and go to class/the gym/etc. I like to throw in tiny lots that are used for basketball courts, ice-cream stands, or just to line the street with trees.

One of my favourite mods for building community lots is moghughson's parking spaces and the parking space that allows you to park your sim's car off the road (in a car park) for that very reason. The parking spaces, if you don't know, rotate cars through them and will leave the spaces empty sometimes, especially later at night. You can make car parks that look like they are being used and, in fact, are usable when your sim is driving.

I like Academie Le Tour & La Fiesta Tech the best. Once a group of students rents a house on campus, the rent stays paid for the rest of forever. The recurring bills & expenses still need to be paid but the rent never comes due again. Whenever a Sim graduates I move another one in. I like to create households of ppl who I think will never be able to get along. It makes the game more dramatic.

The dressers in the house hold all the clothes that have been worn by any of the students who have ever lived there. If anyone in the house seems the least bit interested in cooking, I build a greenhouse out back & let all of them build gardening skill. All the Sims in my game who are young enough to attend college do so & stay in the dorms only until a vacancy opens up in one of the houses.

I just made my own custom college. Since my custom 'hood has a seagoing theme to it, I created a student center on a beach lot.

Eventually I hope to add more to it, such as a coffee shop or something.