How do you decide if your young adults live in a dorm or a house or sorority/fraternity?

Sometimes I need them in a sorority/fraternity for story, so then they go there. Otherwise, they all room in together, because college is too darn long already without adding more households to play, thenk yew. When they all room in together, it's usually in a dorm so they can meet potential spouses.

I use the inteenimator with the residential graduates flavor pack, which means sims can live on university lots indefinitely. Once my hood has a university (it's currently prehistoric) I plan to set up each academic department as a residential lot, where both the "professors" (graduates who stay on the lot to teach newcomers, keep the lot's budget active and write scholarly books (novels)) and the students live. Through a story event and a large infusion of capital (from a variety of in-hood sources), new departments can be founded. I only have a rough idea of what departments there will be, and I want to let things play out on their own, but I expect to create, in chronological order:

The Holy Seminary of Heimlichbourg: The very first university lot will be founded by the One Holy Literalist and Intersessionist Church of Hehimlichbourg, and will only teach theology (which I'll represent with the philosophy major). Priests and bishops will have to attend this department in order to join the church hierarchy.

The College of Laws: Once the legal system is complex enough to support lawyers, this place will educate them, and will also maintain a law library. All of this will be represented in the game with novels.

The College of Letters

The College of Arts

The College of History (including archaeology)

The College of Natural Philosophy (physics and biology)

I don't approve of fraternities and sororities in real life or in the game, so all my sims go to dorms. They could go to rental housing and be more realistic, I suppose. Anyway my dorms are modeled on the "colleges" at my university, each of which had an academic theme. They had the dormitories, the dining hall, some classrooms, some offices, a library, and a "fireside lounge," and some other facilities that varied according to the college's theme. So I make a few dorms, each with a general theme and skill objects related to the theme -- my favorites are the horticulture/biology college, the engineering/physics college, the earth sciences college (inculding astgronomy!) and the arts and crafts college. A liberal arts college would be possible if it also included performing arts, and a medical/physical education college would be possible too.

I also always make the dorms hold more than eight, because I want my sims to interact with dormies.

I haven't gone so far as to move professors in -- I wouldn't know how.

Freshers/Freshman/First years always live in dorms. After that, I either put them in a specific dorm for their subject consisting of around 5 dorm-rooms with certain objects needed to skill for that subject (or sometimes a few subjects that are similar e.g. Art and Drama in a larger dorm of about 12 dorm rooms), greek house or 2-3 of them live in their own little house on campus. Also if a young adult becomes pregnant or has a child, they're required to live in one of the 'young parents' cottages at the edge of campus that's just a two bedroom mini-house.

Usually if a sim has a boyfriend/girlfriend they tend to live together the year after they get together (e.g. if they met in their second year, they'll probably live together for their third) or sometimes with a good friend (possibly both. Issiah Gavigan lives on campus with his girlfriend and Gallagher Newson in one of my neighbourhoods). I don't tend to make greek houses often just because it feels like I have to constantly add more Sims to keep it going after the older ones graduate, but if I do make a greek house - any friends that are made are usually added to the household the following year.

Edit: If I have a lot of university Sims, such as now that I'm using a mega-hood and have all 3 universities attached, I usually throw a few households together because university can be quite boring at times.

All mine live in dorms - I have several which are always occupied. I did, at one point, let sims live in their own houses - like BigSimsFan, usually after the first year - but I just like the dorms (or halls of residence as we'd call them) and tend not to do anything else now. I don't do sororities/fraternities because we don't have them over here and I prefer an English feel wherever possible.

Depends if where a space opens up. I have a boys dorm and a girls dorm that hold up to eight but min of 4, they all are forced to have room mates. I have a scholarship sorority and a state fraternity and usually my popularity sims join that or else it gets filled with a sim whose parents were in the Greek system. If I need more room in the dorms for freshmen, the upperclassmen will be moved out to apartments or houses with room mates. Right now I have 36 YA sims across three campuses but there going to be a handful of graduations soon and spaces will open for incoming uni students.

Some of mine go away to uni and live in a dorm and later on will move to a small house. I haven't made a Greek house for awhile, but will again at some point. Others live at home and simply go to class in the main hood.

I have limited university housing because otherwise I'd end up with as many university households as non-university in my megahood. So ALT only offers the dorm. This is justified by the fact that sims who go to ALT go to meet the sort of sims who go to ALT. SSU and LFT offer dorm, frat, and sorority, and student family housing. Sims have to be married or have one or more children to live in the rental houses, which are the student family housing.

Most of my sims start in dorms. Since my sims need to pay for college few can afford to leave the dorms. The one exception is when a sim has a child, then they can only live in private housing, normally in a group of other young parents or with close friends or significant other. I only have one of these houses so far.

When it comes to choosing a dorm I tend to go by a number of factors. First I look at the current students in each dorm and when they're leaving, I like to keep a few sims in each dorm at all times so I try not to move all the freshmen from one season into the same dorm. Sims in a serious relationship generally move in with their significant other. I also try to have sims move in with a close friend. Siblings may or may not be kept together depending on how close they are.

I've never been big on sororities but when the children of my grilled cheese cult become YAs they'll probably start one up.

Maybe down the track when more sims come to Ferrygate (the university of my BACC hood) I'll start offering some other options but tbh I like dorms, they hold a lot of sims and are cheap, quick and easy.

For average Sims, I usually put them through two "years" in the dorms, and then the last two years in a rental house with roommates (usually their highest ranking university friends).

Some do join sorority/fraternity. Popularity Sims that have more detailed backgrounds (played in main hood before going to University) will usually end up joining and moving into a house. If they do that, it follows the same rule where they spend two years in the dorms. I've wanted to put apartments on college campus, but haven't yet.

Only the VERY RICHEST of Sims skip living in a dorm, but I don't like to do that, because playing the Sims in a dorm is just more fun than in a rental house, at least for me, anyway.

The sims of Drama Acres move into residences on campus when they can afford it, or when they have connections on campus with room for them. All the descendents of the original core six get to live in Alma Mater House, and the lease of the Romantic Residence house has been rolling over for years, with the residents advertising for housemates (if I want to bring in someone new) or inviting their friends, or the younger siblings of friends, to live in the second bedroom.

Otherwise, people live in dorms until they can afford to move into a residence. Scholarship House consisted of eight sims who pooled their scholarship money as freshmen and kept the house till they graduated. Amanda Ruben and Ruby Gorey had enough scholarship money to move into one-bedroom residences when they arrived on campus, and they wanted to live alone. Miguelito Casa invited his fiancee to live with him.

Some CAS sims and teen townies have been moved in specifically to pledge the Greeks when I didn't have enough people cycling through to keep them at a satisfactory level. People pledge the Greeks when they roll wants, or when circumstances make it a desirable option, or when it's in-character for them to do so. All the descendents of the original Greek sims are pressured to join. Some of them, like Amanda Ruben and Edward Beare, have other things they'd rather do with their college experience; but others go along with family tradition.

At ALT, I've decided there's a first-semester-in-dorm rule. It explained why Woody Weiss didn't at once move in with his friends who were already in their own residence when he came to campus.

I just realized I didn't answer the question of why. I go by my sims personalities and what I think they would want. So some seem the type to find a dorm an adventure where as others might dread it and be more inclined to do college at home.

I have no clue what a sorority/fraternity is supposed to be. I never play that way.
I build all my dorms, and my students all lives there. They are built like apartments, and have a place to cook/eat meals, and a toilet.
Showers are not in their units, depending of the size I build them.
Some dorms will have a uni stove and the elder cook regardless of the kitchen in their units. Some won't and sims will have no other choice than learn how to cook.
They are young adults..they should already have some skills.

A sorority is a Greek house of only girls and the fraternity is only guys.

I'm from the UK and a lot of the college stuff in Sims is alien to me.


Yes but we don't have greek houses in Europe and I wouldn't even have heard of them if it wasn't for the Sims. I could tell the sex difference thing but other than that - what, an extra house to live in, where the whole idea is to have constant parties? Sounds... odd. I mean yeah lots of people associate uni with partying, but the university itself, beyond providing a nightclub and pub, doesn't tend to condone it.

So, they live in dorms for the first two years, similar to the first year in the UK (and we call them halls, not dorms). By that time, they're expected to have built up relationships with enough other students to get a house share together, which they generally have. If they are really rich then they might get a house sooner, and if there is a specific reason (e.g. extreme social anxiety) they might stay longer in the dorms, but generally the rule is you're out after the second year, to make room for the new crop of first years.

I never used to play Greek houses because I'm not familiar with them in real life, but recently I started to - I had the Capps set one up for their family, so that they get a nice and luxurious residence all through college, but you have to be a Capp (automatic membership) or be close friends with the Capps to get in. Of course nobody who fraternises with the Montys is getting close! And I continued to play the four Maxis set up greek houses, which is how I got started. I tend to play them by whenever I'm on the household, I have the sims try to make friends with dormies, new playables, etc, and once they have a high enough relationship they ask them to pledge. Then they can abuse influence to get assignments, term papers, cleaning, entertainment and food out of them. And finally they move in. The more sims the better - it makes the house lively and fun to play. If they were originally dormies, then I just turn them into townies when they graduate or drop out. For playable sims on the outside, if they seem the type to want to join (and that generally means popularity, pleasure or romance, plus outgoing and playful) then they can go through the whole process to befriend the members, you know when they come over. I had only done that scenario for the first time a few months ago, it was quite fun to play through.

In my other hoods there are no greek houses at all - the one based on a UK style university definitely doesn't, just mini-dorms that I built with 4 rooms each (I'll build bigger ones too at some point) and Plasticbox's tiny one-square houses make up the student residences on that campus. The "nostalgia" hood university isn't big enough yet for anything like that, and actually they just live in the dorms until graduating. The apocalypse hood hasn't unlocked university yet. I'm thinking of making some themed greek houses - more like a society, for music or art or nature or whatever. That could be a fun way to play. "The house of the unwashed hippies" I remember years ago I had a very promiscuous bisexual sim and I was going to have him start a greek house where everyone had to woohoo with a member to get in, but I never got that far.

We don't have it in Australia either, but I guess I know most of the American lingo. nappy-diaper, footpath-sidewalk. When I first played it I thought the 'Greek House' was a sims 2 invention just like they have alien male births and plant sims, didn't learn until later it was a real thing lol.

When I was a kid, I use to think those Greek Houses weren't just an American thing. I'm glad I realized later that they are otherwise I would've been really disappointed by now. I remember when an American exchange student went to my uni for a year, and she was talking about her sorority and I was like "yeah... we don't have those.... I only know what you're talking about because of Sims"

Same with Majors, if you hadn't decided what you were studying in University by the time you started over here, you'd be kicked out.

My Sims pretty much only live in dorms. College life is the time to socialise, so I like to put Sims that otherwise never would've gotten to meet each other in dorms together and see what happens. I have their entire life to let them live on their own in their own house - but college is the time to be in the middle of it all I think. I've tried playing houses and Greek houses but I can never seem to like them. They seem so empty compared to the dorms, there's just less going on.
Which is probably because of my gameplay, because I rarely use community lots at university. The thing is, I'm really dependent on the mod Community Lot Time when it comes to regular gameplay, but this mod doesn't work at university. I guess for most people that wouldn't be a problem because the timer ticks on anyway, but I play with the college clock frozen so I can decide for myself when I want my Sims to graduate. Sending my Sims to community lots when they're at uni is therefore only annoying to me, so I tend to avoid it as much as I can. However, not leaving the lot for so long can only work when the lot is interesting in the first place. My dorms therefore need to function as small community lots - which actually works. It's the place where Sims meet each other, hang out, do stuff, study, party, etc. Pretty much the same thing they do at community lots. Surrounded by so many Sims I always feel like there's enough going on.

If you can get a copy of the movie "Legally Blonde" with Reese Witherspoon, you'll get a sounder idea of what the sorority/fraternity system is supposed to be like and to accomplish. Through sims (and "Animal House," which AFAIK is where the notion of the toga party originates) you'll get a sound idea of how it's perceived by Americans who are outside the system.

It's much the same concept as a fraternal (Masons, Lions Club, JayCees) or professional (Rotary) organization. Members pool their resources, support each other, and build networks of personal associations that will help them get ahead in various ways. The original Greek Houses on or slightly off-campus tended to form either in response to a shortage of space in the dorms, or (and here comes the bad taste that the Greek system leaves in our mouths) as a way to separate members from non-members and reinforce the concept of them as elites. Though arguments for joining Greeks are heavy on the sisterhood/brotherhood concept and ideals of public service (and Greek houses do organize public service events, food drives and charity benefits and things), in practice they inevitably tend to devolve into snobbish cliques that throw a lot of wild parties and continue the toxic "jocks and cheerleaders" popularity culture from high school. They are also, in practice, both racist and classist - you won't find a lot of black Phi Beta Kappas. Members will pressure their children to become members, and current members of Greek houses feel obliged (or may be required by charter) to let in pledges who are "legacies," regardless of how well they fit with the stated ideals expressed in the organization's charter.

This is why Allegra Gorey objects to sororities "on principle" and Martin Ruben is embarrassed that his brother's in a frat.

I, of course, have integrated my Greeks, and a lot of the sims who have joined the SSU Greeks were poor townies or CAS sims who needed a leg up. Both my big Guasimalan simmigrant families, the Ianas and the Casas, homed in on the Greeks as good vehicles for assimilating faster into Simerican culture. I enjoy playing them, as they really are excellent networking tools in the game, with enough room to invite multiple households over and allow playable sims to mingle. They also give Popularity and Pleasure sims a structure and a safety net. I make upperclassmen responsible for the bills and for the well-being of younger members, which tends to help them mature and may be the vector for a Junior-year aspiration transition. The Tricou Girl in the Hat grew up to a Fortune sim in Tri-Var and established her adult tendency to take responsibility for a large circle of friends-and-relations. Her sister, the infamous Bad News Beverly, went on academic probation twice and nearly bankrupted the sorority, but her sisters rallied around her and kept her from any significant disaster, and themselves from the repo man. They are a lot of fun to play.

In real life, I'd as soon have cut off my nose as join a sorority.

For me, every sim spends at least their first year in dorms. I use that as a settling in year, with them getting to the routine of university (and not risk starving on the off-chance they got to uni with no cooking points). If they can afford it, they move into rented accommodation for the second year -- though some sims (popularity or pleasure, most likely) are more inclined to stay in dorms. For those doing a Master's or a Doctorate, they must move into off-campus accommodation (mainly because residential graduates doesn't work for me with dorms).

For Greek houses, I have two -- one male, one female. Again being from the UK, I've no experience with them, so I set made my own thoughts up. They're (in Cresdale, anyway) those big, expensive houses on the outer skirts of the university where all the (usually) rich kids live while doing their bachelor's/undergrad degree. The sorority was founded by Harmony and Melody Lyndhurst, and the fraternity was founded by Jason and Riley Wegner. So far there's not been much of a legacy to uphold, as there have only been two graduates per Greek house.

I played the SSU greek houses and keep a random placeholder student in each one to keep them active, but haven't had anyone pledge in a long, long time. Instead, I play my sim Uni as was my experience in r/l, where everyone lives in co-ed "houses" that serve as the social hubs of the campus - I use the five-person dorm (I dislike the larger ones) and fill as many as I need (there are 8 houses on the campus which can accommodate 40 active students at any one time, which was the highest population so-far on campus)

Students are assigned to houses mostly randomly, although I do have a couple principals I like to follow - siblings have to go in different houses (if possible) and existing couples live together about half the time - although I prefer to have them live in different houses too - the rationale for both is to make it easier for everyone to make new friends - people will invite households over and have big parties where everyone can get to know each other easily.

My houses all share a similar design. Each student has their own room with a double bed and basically nothing else. Everything else is in the common areas, from flat-screen TVs to hot tubs to gaming tables and skill items.

All of my first years live in the dorms, then they move out once they become sophomores because I like them to have more space, privacy and the responsibility of cooking their own meals. They only pledge for a fraternity or sorority if they roll a want to, or if it fits their story. They can either join the party sorority/frat or the academic fraternity, for Sims who make the Deans List every semester.

In my game it's mostly an economic decision. Living in a private house is 50-100% more expensive in just semester fees, and bills will be tougher as well. Unless they have parents who can pay at least part of the costs, few Sims are going to want to get into more debt just to live alone. And as such, dorms are the most common place to live. I imagine there will be more staying in private houses when my hood is restored and the hood develops, with more people having had time to build up savings.

Some Sims might also choose to live in a dorm because they want to, to socialize, even though they could afford to live on their own. Others will accept a more expensive fee, because they want their own place. (Elna originally lived with her siblings and her brothers girlfriend in a private house, but eventually decided to get her own place as her wish to party was clashing with the other three. A dorm isn't the right place for her either, because although she is social, she is used to a certain amount of space, and a dorm would feel cramped for her). To me, it depends a bit on if the Sim wants to socialize at home, or if they are okay with going out when they want to meet people. A very study-focused Sim is unlikely to want to head out, so they appreciate Sims nearby, whereas a popularity Sim might need some solitude to focus when they are at home.

Greek houses do exist at my campus, but they are not housing options. That's mostly because I'm not interested enough in greek houses to have a constantly through-flow of Sims that keeps it alive, and thus leave the greek house as a sort of symbolic building with a few representative Sims that don't get played. To me, they are like a social group, where you join if you like to do the kind of thing they do, in order to find like-minded friends. There are currently three. One for males, one for females, one gender-mixed. The mixed one is for knowledge and hobbies, and the other two are social.

First year of college, every student lives in the dorms, with a few exceptions. After the first year, if I intend for a sim to go to a sorority or fraternity, they go there. For juniors and seniors, I'll usually gather up three or four friends and have them live in a house for the rest of college. The rest, who don't go to the Greek or don't move out with friends, stay in the dorms