I've experimented a bit with how to circumvent the most grievous problems with life on the campus in UL, and thought I'd share some ideas. Most are probably just stating the obvious, but just in case someone is new to the EP. If anyone else has more tips, please do share.

So, anyway, here is my top ten list:

1. Join a sorority or fraternity instead of a dorm. The difference in personality for the room mates is not huge, but it really does make them a little less dull.

2. Edit your own sorority or frat house. EA's layouts are impractical, to say the least, especially for parties.

BTW, any downloaded residential or apartment house can be plopped and turned into a dorm, though you may have to uninstall most NRaas modules so the options actually appear in the menu, and put them back afterwards.

I don't know which module screws up that drop-down box, unfortunately, but at least in my game the options just vanish when I have all the NRaas modules installed. But MasterController, Careers and Relativity are not it. It also seems to happen without Overwatch too, so that one is probably also safe. You can leave those in place, so it doesn't screw up your settings.

Make sure you have enough beds for 8 people to sleep in, btw. Having enough toilets and showers also ain't a bad idea. Especially since your room-mates WILL break one every other day. And then where are you going to woohoo... err... wash before class?

DON'T use double beds, since even if you set ownership to yourself, it's only for one half of the bed. The game can sill have a random stranger dive into the other half. Which will exclude you from using your half when you're not friends with them.

DON'T include any coffee machines, or your room-mates can get stuck using one. Note that without one you WILL get to see people collapsing on the floor asleep if you party all night, but it beats having someone nurse the same coffee cup all night until they stink, or worse yet, until they starve to death.

3. Replace the stove with a fireproof one. I can't stress this enough. As most of you already found out, your room-mates WILL try to cook, and someone with Unlucky trait (yes, there is at least one, probably more), zero cooking skill and bad mood... yeah, I know y'all have seen the gruesome results.

Now the game might warn about items not allowed if you turn a residential lot into a dorm, and it has an expensive fireproof stove on it. And it will remove it. Apparently just because EA are dicks. Your room-mates are apparently supposed to go up in flames. Go back into edit mode and put it back. Yeah, it's not allowed, but be a rebel, man. Stick it to the Man. Fight for your right to be room-mates with LIVING people

4. Plop some party and/or entertainment items, since you're not buying them out of your house funds anyway. I found the dance floor and stereo to be a pretty good idea, since both seem to draw all the dancers and streakers when the stereo is on.

Generally, it doesn't have to be unrealistically luxurious or anything (unless you really want to), but if you only wanted the room-mates to just sit and study, you probably wouldn't be reading this

It's also probably a good idea to not use the portable ones, since your room-mates treat anything like their own property. (Generally, the game has very little difference between them and family members.)

5. If you can afford that, bring enough funds to hire a Live In Maid and the Chef. Be warned that this will pretty much double your costs for a 2 week term, but it goes a looong way towards making sure the other guys or gals have enough time to do something else than set the stove on fire.

You'll need a landline phone to hire them, btw. Just plop a wall phone somewhere.

It also helps if you have ceiling lights to set as inactive room for both. Without them, both will idle in front of the last thing they used, and end up blocking your way to the fridge or counter with the food or whatever. You HAVE to tether them to a ceiling light if you don't want to have to push them each time.

Note that this doesn't have to be in another room, even though it says "service room". Actually both seem tethered to the ceiling light, not the room. Once they're done doing whatever they were doing, they'll go idle under that light or as close as they can. So just tethering the chef to a light that is one square away in front of the stove makes him hang around it naturally and yet not block everyone. And for the maid, a good position is near (but, again, not blocking) the next items:

6. If you're gonna get the live-in maid, consider including a clothes hamper, washing machine, and either a dryer or clothes line when you're editing the sorority/fraternity house. The clean clothes and sheets buff is really going to help prevent your sim from having a nervous breakdown on Monday and Wednesday. And with so 8 people dropping clothes everywhere, you'll have the buff refreshed every couple of hours, so it's on all the time.

7. Go on a world adventure before going to Uni and get a few of those non-perishable rations and a few showers in a can. It'll help a lot if you didn't pay attention in the morning and the game got you to class before you could even eat or shower. Just use them between classes.

You COULD also carry around some candy bars from the vending machine instead, but be warned that they can make your sim nauseous and ruin their mood further instead of helping at all. (Yeah, thanks, EA.) The high quality rations from WA don't do that.

Or witch apples, plasma fruit for the Vampires, etc, if appropriate for your sim.

8. Save time with studying. Especially if your next class is in the same building, wth, you can study the book they gave you in the 2 hour break between classes instead of using your time at home. You'll be a little late for next class, but meh, you'll have better grades WITHOUT spending two hours of your party time in the evening.

9. It should be obvious, but you don't need to wait to be invited to some crappy party in an impractically designed EA house, where everyone is just standing around complaining about routing. Throw your own parties.

Not only they're more fun in a well designed house, but, as you probably know already, throwing an amazing party gives you a hefty morale boost for the next two days. Again, this can go a long way towards not breaking down nervously even when the game is queuing you around with no time to eat, wash or refill your fun or social bars.

10. If you don't mind playing God a little (and if you do, why are you playing a hand of god kinda game in the first place? )... if you don't like the room-mates' personalities, just use NRaas to change them.

Even if you don't change the traits, I like at least setting everyone to like Custom Music, so they won't change the channel on the stereo.

Wonderful post, just a tiny correction, not ALL candy bars make yous sim sick, only the Chunky Nougat Surprise. CNS is like the absolute surefire way to make your sim throw up, but the others don't. Heck, the others give Sugar Buzz positive moodlet. I think I've had a couple of sims dislike other candy bars, but they didn't get nauseous. I've had exactly ONE sim not get nauseous after eating CNS, and I think the eating action was interrupted somehow. Of course, the freebies you get at the Meet and Greet only give you CNS. How sadistic! Solution: Acquire candy bars many at a time from machine, then look in the inventory and weed out the CNS.

Hmm, can't say I've experimented much with it. It could have been the chunky nougat that made my sim throw up, come to think of it.

Thanks for the info.

BTW, just to belabor the point and state the obvious some more, here are a few more pointers on how to have a great party with the above setup. Now most of these are not specifically campus-specific, but still.

- Get Wire House Speakers - Sims Can Sleep (yes, it still works with the latest patch), so the room-mates who pass out on the floor don't come turn off your stereo. This helps more in this setup, since room-mates are not family members and you can't tell them to get some sleep before the party.

Then obviously wire the house with speakers, so people get the moodlet all over the place.

AwesomeMod also has an option to not wire bedrooms, but here you can't direct those guys or gals to go sleep in the bedroom. They'll pass out all over the place, and with only the AwesomeMod script, they WILL come turn off the stereo. And it can be a lot of them. It gets annoying real fast to turn it on every 30 seconds.

With the mod linked above, you will still wake up sims that are in the same room as the stereo, and they will turn off your stereo. But the guys passing out in other rooms can rest in peace... err... I mean, get some rest.

- your room mates can take leftovers from the fridge. Party guests, as far as I can tell, don't. (It's one of those things that count as inapropriate, I think.) Both the Live In Maid and the Chef by default are set to put leftovers in the fridge rather quickly. You can probably see the problem.

In fact, I threw a bachelorette party (not that she was getting married, but I figured she's a Bachelor Of Science after graduation ) and the maid promptly put the cake a guest had brought in the fridge. Which I thought was pretty rude.

So obviously disable the option to put leftovers away. On BOTH.

- consider spicing up the food with "herbs". Don't worry, I haven't seen them eat enough to get nauseous, at least with "peppermint". And the moodlet is pretty hefty. It helps a lot with getting everyone to think it was the greatest party ever.

- the party seems to keep going even if you go to sleep. Maybe because the other room-mates aren't? In fact, it keeps going even after being supposedly broken up by the police. Sometimes it keeps going until noon even if you've been in class for the last 4 hours.

So if you just want the moodlet, but not to be with the energy in the red next morning in class, just go to sleep and leave those guys partying

And yeah, don't worry about the police much. It will cause one or two guests to leave, tops. So if you get warned that the cops are coming to break up your party... screw the cops. (Even literally, if you're really good friends )

- streaking actually counts as a funny interaction, AND gives a somewhat decent moodlet too while in effect. So dare them to :p

That's all good advice. I usually get a tent while I'm at it and rarely bother going back to the dorm. And a Kenspa since I tend to not get my sims cars.

Also, make a snow angel between classes in the winter. It maxes fun and the gives 8 hour "Having a Blast" moodlet for doing something that only takes a coupla sim minutes.

Hmm, actually that sounds like good advice. I never got seasons, since I actually LIKE eternal spring (it's like my sims died and went to heaven... well, at least they're brain dead anyway ) so I can't verify it. But if something gave me an 8 hour buff between those awful classes, I'd most certainly do it.