The Sims 2 University Expansion Pack Reviews

• Hail Alma Mater

  
  By A19TAVPZ517Z5Y on 2005-03-03
  I bought this game last night and played it for two hours. I must say it's quite good. The gameplay is fairly easy; it's really less complicated than I imagined it would be.
  
  What's New
  
  * New "Young Adult" Stage - Once your Sims have gone through adolescence, they're ready to enter this stage in their lives and go to college. You do so by moving them first into the "Family Bin" and then move them to a dormitory (as you would normally move a family into a house). You can also choose from the Young Adult Sims already available in the Family Bin, or you can custom-create your own collegiate Sims (create up to eight per household).
  
  * New Buy and Build Objects - Although I haven't completely explored the expansion pack, there are some new objects that add more fun to the game, like additional exercise machines, decorations, arcade games, communal showers, bonfires, etc.
  
  * Influence - When you interact with other Sims or fulfill certain Wants, you gain Influence points. This feature allows you to "influence" other Sims into doing favors for you, like writing your term paper.
  
  * Three University Lots - Sims State University, Academie Le Tour, La Fiesta College.
  
  * Majors - Choose from a variety of courses which will help shape your Sim's future career path.
  
  How the Game Works:
  
  As I mentioned earlier, the gameplay is fairly simple. You can choose to play your former teen-aged Sims, pick the ready-made ones from the Family Bin, or custom-create new Young Adults.
  
  Young Adults have four stages representing each year: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior. Each stage or "school year" has two semesters, which has an X number of hours to complete. At the end of each semester, there is a final exam that your Sim has to take.
  
  Complete all the academic work required (by going to class, doing term papers, studying, etc.), and your Sim will do well in school. The "Academic Panel," which normally shows career/skill path, displays your Sim's GPA, major, and minimum grade level to be attained. If your Sim fails, he/she goes into "Academic Probation" and has to repeat the previous term. If he/she fails a second time, he/she gets kicked out of school and into the "real world" where they transform into normal adults.
  
  As a Freshman, your Sims start out living in a dorm. But as they gain more simoleons, they may choose to live in a private residence. As they meet more people, they can join a frat or sorority house by making a telephone call.
  
  After your Sims have successfully completed all four years, they graduate and move on.
  
  When my Sim goes to class, it's not shown what's going on in class. It's similar to when an Adult Sim goes to work. You only see/play your Sim when he/she is actually home. Partying and interacting with other Sims is the whole point of the game.
  
  :)
  
  
  
  

• University Expansion - Fun & Bugs

  
  By A1H0PR6EFS4MN0 on 2005-09-28
  ABOUT THE GAME: Sims can finally have more time to work on the skills they need for their jobs as well as get some aspiration rewards by going to college. The goal of the game is to have your sim "graduate" with good grades but there are alternatives. You can study hard and earn scholarships or you can streak and skip class but beware that if grades suffer too much then your sim risks getting booted from the university. Your college sim will need lots more fun than the typical adult sim, so watch that meter!
  
  LIFELINE: Your college sim will have an additional icon on their time line of life for attending college. They can have a longer life if you manage to meet the majority of their aspirations while they attend college, which also gives you aspiration bonuses to use now or later.
  
  MAJORS: You have the choice of several "majors" for your sim to pick from. You should have your sim go to a computer and declare a major once they get moved in. Some majors lead to new career paths. Your sim can change majors at any time until they are in their senior year.
  
  NEW INTERACTIONS: Your sim can prank, pillow-fight, play kicky bag, entertain with a school cheer, talk about their major, and more... and whats interesting is they have these interaction choices after they move into the regular community. There are certain things your college sim cannot do because they are not a "full adult" yet. For example, they do not have the option to get married, adopt, try for baby, and a few more.
  
  INFLUENCE: You can earn "influence" points much like aspiration rewards and use them to have other people do your assignments, type your term paper, etc. They do not have to be your friend or even know you for you to influence them. You can influence anyone, including the cafeteria worker if you live in a dorm. Be warned if you influence a sim who is in desperation of having a need met, you will use the points to influence them but the other sim may not actually complete the task - this is not a bug, it is part of the challenge of the game. The amount of influence points you can earn is affected by how many people / friends your sim has. The more friends you make, the more influence you are able to store up to use.
  
  KEY TO GETTING GOOD GRADES: The ability your sim has to learn is affected by his/her skills. Very much like a job requires your sim to have certain skills such as cooking/cleaning, your sim's major will require them to have certain skills and your sim can only "learn" up to a point until they obtain the needed skills. Once they achieve the required skills, they can learn more. If you manage to get the "learning" meter full; then you do not need to do any more assignments, research, or term papers until after the final exam for that semester because it will not carry-over into the next.
  
  STUDYING: Going to class WILL earn your sim some learning and will fill part of their social needs. Assignments are the fastest way for sims to earn learning and does not take down their needs much. Research and term papers are the best way to earn lots of "learning" towards school but both takes your fun meter down fast. Research is great because you can ask to join you and the more you have with you the faster your learning meter will get filled - it also will fill some social if other people join you.
  
  NOTE: You can influence people to do your term paper which is the absolute best way to go so you can meet your sim's needs while getting their learning done at the same time. Of course if they are a sim with learning aspiration, they will want to write their term paper and you can earn 3,000 aspiration points for letting them do so.
  
  MONEY: Your sim can work part-time in the cafeteria if they live in a dorm to earn some cash. Your sim will earn 10 simoleons for every 10 minutes worked, but it increases their needs quickly. Your sim can also tutor other sims by clicking on the other sim's assignments for simoleons.
  
  FINAL EXAMS: Your sim(s) will have to take EIGHT "final exams" - two for each semester they are in school. After each exam your sim will need to do more assignments, research, write term papers, and earn skills in order to maintain the coveted dean's list scholarship of $1200 simoleons. Each year your sim is in college and each semester gets harder than the last with more research, assignments, etc to get your sim to max their learning potential.
  
  MOVIES: There are several movies you can view if you get certain things to happen in your game, but FYI you will only see the graduation movie if your sim actually has a graduation party. They will change into their gown at the beginning of the party and the movie comes up at the end. I did not get the movie when I moved my sim out without the party.
  
  BUGS & KNOWN FIXES:
  * other sims quit moving/stuck - have your sim talk to them
  * other sims won't stop researching - have your sim
  call this sim from a community lot
  * your sim's arm gets stuck out/up - have your sim play
  chess
  * your sim wants a party, but phone does not give option of
  throw party - save game, go all the way out and start
  the game over and try again. This will not work if your
  sim is already in the middle of throwing a party.
  * your sim can't talk/interact with someone researching
  except to research with them - call from community lot
  
  CHEATS
  * go to buy mode and buy expensive items, floors, paint,
  etc for the dorm you want to move your sim into
  * move your sim in, claim door
  * your sim can sell ANY dorm items
  * your sim can replace expensive wallpaper with cheap - $
  * your sim can replace expensive flooring with cheap - $
  * immediately after a final exam, your sim sometimes has
  the option to go to class (again!) which may increase
  learning. I haven't tried it.
  * have your sim interact (talk for example) to a sim that
  is not done with their assignment. The other sim will
  quit and stand up. Cancel whatever you told your sim to
  do to them and have them "tutor for simoleans". You may
  earn anywhere from 6 to 48 or even 52 simoleans.
  
  

• Already Returned Expansion for Refund

  
  By A2E11447JV4X3W on 2005-03-02
  I waited passionately for the day the first expansion would arrive. And after installing the game, I was disappointed with the poor repetitious music replacements, very longer load times, and extreme slow game performanece when trying to maneuver through a dorm. To top it off, my young adult inexplicably died after sitting down to eat in the cafeteria. This all happened in the first few minutes of the game. By the way, the option for "Young adult" is only available if you go to college. The expansion (2 CD's) will alter your save game files and will delete everything (including any downloads you have added) if you uninstall it.
  
  Very, very disappointing expansion, with the price tag of a full game! There's also an advertisement for the next expansion coming this fall which is similar to Hot Date, that allows your sims to go out on the town to nightclubs.
  
  I would be more grateful if they had just fixed the bugs in the main game, and perhaps add pets, like dogs and cats.
  
  

• Sims on Campus

  
  By A3K8B1K7D30UQ0 on 2006-03-07
  Basically, this first addition to the sims2 creates another neighborhood. This one is a college campus. But colleges arent the only new thing in this game.
  
  However, since the most advertised part of this game is teh biggest, lets start with that.
  
  So, why send your sims to university?
  
  Teens are giving the option to, at any time during their teen days, go to a university, previously added onto the neighborhood by you. if it doesnt have a college, the teens cant attend one. a teen sent to college recieves a memory and enters the "hidden" life stage, gaining them an extra 27 days of life without achedemic probabtion. Of course, your sims could just go straight to adulthood after their teen years, but where is the sim torture in that? ok, its everywhere, but thats besides the point. Sure, higher education doesn't necessarily
  mean better jobs in real life as much as having a social network of friends wide enough to cover New York City, but in The Sims 2, going to university and graduating clearly has advantages, and huge ones at that:
  
  1. Four new careers are unlocked to graduates! These super careers take
  higher skills and more friends, but offer a lot more money, less work days,
  and better hours! Along with these new careers are four new fun career
  rewards. Here are the details:
  
  -Show Business:
  Career Reward: Dr. Vu's Automated Cosmetic (Level 6: Supporting Player)
  
  -Natural Scientist:
  Career Reward: Laganaphyllis Simnovorii (Level 6: Rogue Botanist)
  
  -Paranormal:
  Career Reward: Resurrect-O-Nomitron (Level 5: Medium)
  
  -Artist:
  Career Reward: Luminous Pro Antique Camera (Level 5: Wedding Photographer)
  
  
  2. sims get aspiration bonuses at the end of each year in university. they also get money if they pass at the end of each semester.
  Freshman: +1 want slot
  Sophmore: aspiration change
  Junior: +1 lock slot
  Senior: +1 want slot
  
  therefore, at the end of graduation, your sim will have had the option to change aspirations and have 6 wants and 2 locks, assuming they get that far.
  
  so why wouldnt they get that far? In the senario that you hate your sims and are the kinda person who kills them off, unlucky sims who have been expelled from college(getting on achademic probabtion and then failing again) gain an extra fear slot for you to use in the name of fun, and your sim gets a little red X over the young adult life stage as a reminder. in the case that you just really made a mistake and want your sim to not get an extra fear slot, just call up the college and drop out, and your sim just gets a little white X over the young adult life stage marker, as a reminder that they were too cool for school... or just too stupid.
  
  Other advantages to going to university include extending your sim's life
  naturally by almost thirty days without academic probation, the time to make
  new friends, and increase base skills so you can start off higher on the
  career ladder after you exit university. Sims who have traveled the full way
  to graduation also retain several young adult exclusive social interactions
  like the school cheer and those who graduate with honors get a good automatic
  career boost that allows them to leap positions.
  
  Along with this great new lifestage are other new things that revolve around it
  
  1. There are many advantages in starting a sim out as a teen or younger, such as the extra time to gain skills and make friends, a good number is 11 so that they only need to make one to get the big sim on campus memory. Scholarships can help a lot in university, where a young adult sim will start out with only $500. Also, young adults already have the first kiss memory, so if you are looking to start a story about an innocent sim who goes completely insane and has her first kiss with a no good weirdo, well, its past that point. The
  convenience of creating a young adult instead of a teen however is that you don't have to create their parental units in order for them to exist, so you can make them much easier without having to fill in extra space.
  
  2. Scholarships: basically, your sim can earn money for being parentless(yep, killing the parents finally pays off), having 8+ skills in any area, have high pool(new object) or dance skills, being a zombie(more info later), being abducted by aliens, or being level 3 in a teen career. keeps you from going broke, and then hey, since we are wasting all of our time gaining scholarships, our story about innocent sim turned freak can have her woohoo with someone before they have their very first kiss. which is actually a bit hard, but do-able. oh yea, and an A- or better sim gets a scholarship. you need to use a phone or pc to apply for scholarships, or having the skills doesnt help.
  
  3. There are two ways to send your sims to university, through the
  phone/computer, or the "Move Sims To University" button on the neighborhood
  menu. They both have their advantages and disadvantages.
  
  4. Housing
  Dorms: Basically, your sim runs to claim a door, and gets a puny room with just enough space for a single bed, desk, and a wardrobe.
  
  Normal house: Nothing new really about them, except teh cost something like a third of the normal price because your are "renting" it. once inside, everything costs the same.
  
  Greek houses: your uni sims can start a greek house and live in it.
  
  There are a lot more things that can be said about colleges, but I need to be somewhere soon, so moving on.
  
  The top of the new careers:
  Once you get to the top of these careers, your sims have less work days/hours, and more money.
  
  The new career rewards:
  Du Vu's Thingy: ignoring the fact that every sim already has tons of botox in them, you can give your sim a complete makeover once acheiving level 6, show biz. basically, you can change everything about a simn except eyes and skin if this is used with a mirror.
  
  Cow Plant: The long names plant that looks like a cow, that creates light green spectors of your annoying visitors. just stick it on your sims front porch, and your loner sim will never be bothered again! After 12 hours this level 6 Nat. Sci. reward, it sticks a peice of cake on its tounge every twelve hours to attract sims to their doom. and dont worry, it always wins.
  
  Resurect-o-nomitron: a sims ticket to their second life. If you dont pay enough, you may get a zombie, which isnt any big deal, except that you have to kill them off for them to die, and they have a rather crappy personality. fortunatly or unfortunatly, depending on whether or not you are satan, maxis made it impossible to create a child zombie. too bad. tear tear.
  
  Luminous Pro Antique Camera: Take pictures of a blank wall, and sell them for $100 bucks! Yea!!!
  
  New Objects:
  There are many new objects in the game, includingg additional excersise machines, guitars, drums, bonfires, punch bowl, ect.
  
  Influence: If you have ever thought that NPC and townie sims are overly disposable good for nothing space wasters, then influence wont change anything there, but if you happen to enjoy watching them suffer, forcing them to do all your work, and making them do things against their will, as opposed to using your influence to right all the worlds wrong, then yea, influence is pretty fun >:) Influence points can be gained by fulfilling wants with a blue rim around them. You need more friends, not part of the family, to be able to hold more influence points, the max being 12 friends for 10,000 points. Of special note, if you feel like breaking a trash compatctor or dishwasher, a sim with low mechanical skill is likely to light up like a christmas tree, sorta the sim version of what could possibly happen if you use out of game programs and your game blows up into a firey blue ball visible from space, but thats besides the point.
  
  Lifetimewants: your sims can now have a life time want, which is a want that lasts for life until it is fulfilled, giving your sims permaplatinum levels. therefore, you platinum legacy graves are not worth as much. sims get something like 25k aspiration points and 10k influence points. you can see this by hovering over the aspiration meter. of special note, the family aspiration LTW are hell, so if you get lucky and get the golden aniversery want or become captain hero want, dont change aspirations. also, uni careers are supposedly a LTW, but I have never seen them. what does this tell us about listening to gossip children? moving on.
  
  ok... you can also move sims into an existing household. therefore, you can merge your super rich family with your super poor family for a super rich family. or put all career rewards on one lot and make a training station. how cool is that?
  
  Now, for the big fun part, glitches. I ahve never really experienced glitches, and I play with like a thousand hacks. and the patch, but those a compatible with everything. read what you are installing and compatibility before you install, and your game is 95% less likely to blow up into a big fiery blue ball visible from space. of note however, is that upon 2 children of one family graduate, one had lost the went to college memory, and the other had a memory of graduating summa cum laude(which happened) and cum laude, which didnt. yea, the only thing that even comes close to the horror of the jump bug(like when your sim family with 10 kids forgets they had teh kids and are married) is the cow plant, but we all laugh at the dying sims anyway. So thats about it, overall, this is a great game totally worth getting, even though sometimes college seems to take a while.
  
  
  
  

• A great addition to the Sims 2!

  
  By on 2005-11-07
  I was not very excited when I bought this game, but now I see that I should have been. The Sims 2 University is great! There are lots of new things you can do with your sims. So here are the pros and cons:
  
  Pros
  1. Having been playing this game for about 3 months, I haven't noticed any glitches other than the usual Sims 2 glitches (freezing, etc.)
  2. Sending your sims to college is surprisingly easy. As long as they have some skills that they have built from childhood, they progress rapidly through the eight semesters. Once they graduate, it is much easier to get them good jobs and thus you are much more able to fulfill their aspirations.
  3. Your sims now have "Lifetime Aspirations". These aspirations are linked to their normal aspirations (Family, Knowledge, etc.) and are usually quite difficult to fulfill. For example, a family lifetime aspiration might be "Have six children get married" and a knowledge lifetime aspiration might be "Max out 6 skills". These aspirations are difficult, but add more interest to the game, so that all your knowledge sims, for instance, don't have the exact same lives. Once you have achieved the lifetime aspiration, your sim remains on platinum aspiration for the rest of his/her lifetime. (You can still earn aspiration points, though.)
  4. There are lots of new objects, including the instruments (guitar, bass, drum kit, etc.) and a few extra rewards such as the plastic surgery kit and the cash machine.
  
  Cons
  1. Sending your sims to college is fun, but it takes quite a long time for them to graduate. While it's not very difficult for them to pass all their tests, it is time consuming.
  2. I was disappointed to learn that the NPC's still don't grow up with your sims. (I'm quite tired of having all my teenage sims fall in love with the same boys who will never grow up. Peter Pan, anyone?)
  3. Your sims cannot join a band, but if you have more than one instrument you can ask another sim to "Join" and they will soon play music together, which is quite fun to listen too. Make sure the sim you choose has a high Creativity level, though.
  
  All in all, I would say this game is worth the money. However, I would advise people to wait awhile after buying the Sims 2 to buy this game. It's better to get used to the normal game before buying the expansion pack.
  
  
• Good Gameplay - Even Better Additions Overall...
  By AWVQR7YYTYJ1L on 2005-03-29
  The Sims 2 University has recieved a lot of positive hype - for adding a new dimension of gameplay to the Sims 2. It has also received some negative feedback - people questioning its necessity to the game, or complaining about how rushed it was in its release (The Sims 2 was launched a mere 6 months earlier).
  
  All in all, there is a new dimension of gameplay - that's for sure. You can now choose to make your teenage sims 'grow up' into a young adult life stage, which only takes place if they decide to go to college. You can then place your sims on one of three Maxis-built campuses, or build your own - but where they live isn't all that important as moving to a new campus is easy as pie.
  
  From there your young adult sim goes through 8 semesters of college, with one class a day related to their major (11 in total which require you to build different skills depending on the subject). Each semester is 72 sim hours long - and there is plenty to do in that time, from writing papers, to throwing parties, to joining sororities/frat houses, to falling in love, to streaking, to working at a local coffee/alcohol bar.
  
  At the end of it all there are 4 new career paths, available only to those who graduate from college - natural science, show biz, artist, and paranormal.
  
  To answer the complaint side of it all - yes, there is a question of necessity for the Sims 2 - University, but after all, it is an expansion pack...and it does expand the game and waht you can do with it. After all, my favourite features of the new expansion pack haven't so much been the college experience (thus far) but little nuances like the following.
  
  There are a number of new instruments added to this expansion pack - drums, bass, and a guitar. Your sims can now 'perform' jazz, country, or rock music for tips, and even play together - synchronized - in a band format!
  
  While we're speaking of music, the two new music channels - jazz and college rock, give us some of the best sim music ever produced. The college rock station features actual artists who have re-recorded their songs in simlish for your sim's listening enjoyment.
  
  The aspiration aspect of the game takes on a new level - as new aspiration slots open up as you pass through college, and the new 'influence' bar allows you to control other sims. Not only that, but there is a lifetime aspiration. If completed (and most can only be completed in old age trust me) your sim will achieve platinum mood status for the rest o ftheir lifetime.
  
  Overall, the Sims 2 - University is a decent expansion pack. I've had very few bugs or errors, although I've heard of a few (but not many). There are longer load times, especially when visiting University community lots, and yes, I think Maxis could've expanded the hairstyles/clothing more for young adults, but you can't expect them to get everything right.
  
  If you liked the sims 2 and are looking for a new level of gameplay, then try it out. If you are satisfied with the Sims 2 the way it is, then don't worry about it for now.
  
  
• Lots of nice added features
  By A2XIOXRRYX0KZY on 2005-06-10
  The basic gameplay is, naturally, a lot like Sims2. So if you love or hate that game, you're likely to feel the same way about the expanasion pack.
  
  As for the things it does differently...
  
  This gives your teenager sims a chance to go off and spend 4 years away from their families as university students. Depending on how well they do at it, they may have advantages in the existing careers and access to several new careers.
  
  It can be tough if you try to play with a student who's just been generated at the college level. To gain good grades you have to do things like attend class or do assignments (or use influence to make another sim do assignments and write term papers for you), but there's a cap on how high your grades can go in a given semester depending on whether you've met particular skill requirements. A sim that you've raised from a very young age will probably have plenty of skill to meet most of these (depending, of course, on how well their major matches up with what you've had them practice), but someone with no skills to start with will have a much harder time.
  
  The most interesting new items available are the portable mp3 player, cell phone, and portable video game. The cell phone sometimes caused me some irritation by ringing and waking up a sim who was trying to take a nap during the day, but generally it's nice to not have to make them walk to a phone to make calls. The portable video game can be used to play vs other sims who also own it, which is a nice added feature.
  
  They've done an awful lot of nice things with community lots, such as make it possible for multiple sims to play music together, and to get tips for playing music. It also includes the option to hustle people at pool, make money for tutoring, and get money for being a personal trainer. All of these new very social options really add a lot of flexibility. The unfortunate thing is that the load times for going to a community load (first a load time for the map of the campus, and then a load time after you pick what lot you want to go to) tend to kill most of my interest in making that kind of trip. Since each semester is only 3 sim days long and time spent at community lots does move the semester countdown (understandably so, since it'd be way too easy to get a lot of extra time to do your work otherwise) it's difficult to spend long periods of time at a community lot without having to move to a different one or go back to the dorm to practice / do / learn something else. With the load times as long as they are, it's just an awful lot less irritating to stay in the dorm and buy everything you need.
  
  If your computer has a hard time dealing with all of the sims who show up at your parties already, you'll probably want to stick to a smaller dorm to reduce the number of sims being tracked by the system. They made a good effort to limit the strain on your computer by making the dorm rooms of the sims who aren't under your control look empty unless you actually enter them. Still, if you don't have a high end computer and you want to throw big parties, moving into the 12 person dorm probably isn't the best plan.
  
  Greek Houses are also a fun feature, particularly when you can convince someone to pledge and can order them around for a period of time before they become an official member. It's a little bizarre how often they just wander off to some mysterious place on campus and come back with pizza, but it's certainly convenient that there's rarely a need to cook.
  
  Also, even if you don't plan to play the university areas, you can still take advantage of the greatly expanded collection of items available, including both old items with new looks and entirely new things such as the pool table. It's also very nice that they have a built in option to move one family in with another from the neighborhood screen, rather than having to get them to be close friends and convince one to accept an invitation to move into the house.
  
  On the whole, if you didn't have fun playing with your copy of Sims 2, the University expansion probably won't make it much better for you. If you enjoyed the main game and would like to have some more variety of gameplay however, University is certainly worth buying.
  
  
• Relive your college years!
  By ANEDXRFDZDL18 on 2005-03-07
  The sims 2 go to college and you can too with the latest Sims 2 expansion!
  
  New Stuff: Great new 'do's for your Sims, a few more faces, clothing, music, and dorm-style living. The Sims now have cafeterias and professors to please, as well as a few new funky careers such as the Paranormal career. Personally, Its great not to have to worry about cooking your own food and cleaning the bathrooms! They've also added some mod new skins such as tattoos for the men and ladies!
  
  My Sims are still freshmen yet, but I've spent several hours of enjoyable time planning their careers and love life. The only downside to this game is it does take a while to load. But once it does... Its well worth the wait! A++++ Game. You'll love it if you liked Sims 2!
  
  
• University Drops-Out
  By A3P9BQU9W0IRXW on 2005-03-08
  I am a HUGE fan of The Sims. There was no question that I would buy this expansion for The Sims 2. I must say that I thought the price was too high for an expansion, and it comes with an ad for a future expansion. I installed the expansion properly, but my sims can never enter the dorms to actually begin the game. It just sits there and loads forever. I tried it with my system at normal, and also with all my startups disabled. Same result, so we know it is not a background program causing the problem. The manual says I can email tech support, but of course there is no email address in the manual and I could not find it on their website. I read the FAQ's online and tried all their solutions. Nothing. I will not pay long distance charges to call tech support. They were awful, rude and unhelpful last time. My system exceeds the requirements in every way. I have an hp pavillion 724c, with a 2.53 ghz processor, 1 gig of RAM, an ATI All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro and about 380 gigs of free hard drive space. I also have all the latest drivers. My recomendation is not to buy the expansion until they put out patches or solve these problems. With shipping I am out nearly forty bucks for something that doesn't work which isn't even a game, but rather an exapnsion. They obviously did not bother to do enough beta-testing, and put out a product with great flaws. I want so much to use this exapnsion and send my sims to college and all that. I have not requested a refund yet. I still have my hopes that EA will do the honourable thing and make this work. I will NEVER pre-order a Sims 2 expansion again. I will wait until Nightlife is out and the bugs are fixed before buying the next one. See? They know how loyal we SimFanatics are and they took advantage of us.
  
  
• Backup your files before you install the Expansion Pack
  By A3FDNAT0LD1L0Y on 2005-03-03
  So, being overconfident that I'd get through the installation flawlessly, caused me to lose all my saved games from Sims 2 because I had downloads that, I assume, conflicted with the expansion pack. When I sent my sims to college they just stood there on the curb, not moving, like zombies. I had to uninstall both the EP and Sims 2 and re-install everything. Fortunately I salvaged a few of my built homes and my "Downloads" folder. If you're like me, who downloaded A LOT of custom walls, floors, clothes, skins, furniture, etc. If you can salvage anything before having to uninstall, move the "downloads" folder to your desktop or something.
  
  I re-installed both games now and am currently going through my downloads to try to weed out the bad downloads that cause my EP to not function correctly. So far, most of my downloads I was able to put back into the current "downloads" folder and get the game to work. However, I can only seem to enter one lot every time I load the game. If I exit a lot and try to enter another lot, it gets hung up on the loading screen, at which point I go into the Task Manager and close the game, so I can re-start it again. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, PLEASE let me know.
  
  I haven't gotten to playing the actual expansion portion for too long, cuz I want to include as many of my custom downloads into the game first, but it seems interesting. I already saw someone streaking up and down the stairs of the dorm. It was pretty funny. I will probably update my review, once I put more play time in.
  
  
• Great Addition To Core Game
  By A7M12HCIOW8CP on 2005-03-10
  The S2U EP is a great addition to the core of the Sims 2 game. Adding the new Young Adult age just "makes sense", so rather from going from Teen to Adult your Sims now go from Teen into Young Adult IF you take them to University (otherwise, they head straight into the Adult age after their period as a Teen).
  
  The new Influence system added to the game is quite interesting. Now you can get your active sim to Influence others to do their bidding, which can be a lot of fun depending on the circumstances.
  
  This EP had a very smooth installation, with no problems whatsoever. I don't use downloaded items/patches in my game so this may be why, as I'm playing the game as Maxis intended.
  
  For those who've reviewed and "complained" they couldn't get the EP to install: If you have any "hacked" / third-party objects/patches in your game, you MUST remove these BEFORE attempting install of Sims 2 University. Quite a bit of downloaded items available since the release of Sims 2 were incompatible with Sims 2 University (since S2U completely updated the "core" of the game engine). Many "third-party" fan sites have NOT updated their items to be University compatible. Remove your third-party downloads (skins, patches, objects) THEN try to install University and I'm sure you'll have a much better go of it. :)
  
  
• Good concept - poor execution
  By A1V73165LHTU2Z on 2005-08-04
  Uni provides some nice additions to the game. New careers, some wonderful career rewards and objects. The new influence ability adds an interesting twist to the game. Permanent platinum aspiration can make things too easy though. The new building cheats are a welcome addition too. College life itself can get a little boring after the first few sims. It would have been nice to be able to skip a few semesters and speed the whole thing up and still reap the graduation benefits.
  
  There are quite a few bugs. Nothing is more frustrating than having a teen you've been building up skills for college get suddenly sent home before graduating. Frat houses are bugged at level 6, young adult NPCs don't move out of college to get married. That's just scratching the surface. A patch is forthcoming, but it's been a while. Hopefully it will fix most of the game destroying bugs and let this EP really shine. But as it stands out of the box, I can only give it 2 stars.
  
  
• More fun!
  By A3Q5QOWMVPTAN2 on 2005-09-15
  This is a good expansion pack for an already great game! Of course, there are new objects, new clothes a new age group (Young Adult) and new professions. These add a bit of variety to a game that already has loads of replayability. Sending the teens to college gives them an opportunity to build more skill points, giving them a better chance of reaching the top of a professional career track, something I found difficult with the pre-Universtity Sims 2. It also makes me a little nostaligic for my college days. Despite getting this expansion the day after it came out, I still haven't fully explored all of the new options mainly because I care too much about my Sims' gpa's. It is hard to keep them at a A+ level while leaving time to pursue the other aspects of college life. The option of using influence points to get other people to do the homework would certainly open up more time for social pursuits (as would being happy with a B or C average), though a more honorable method of keeping grades up while socializing would be nice. Filling the skills for teens before they go to University would help save time as well. Despite this, I still have a lot of fun with it and haven't grown tired of it yet.
  Now for the gripes that kept me from giving it 5 stars. One minor gripe was that when I installed this expansion and then went into a previously existing household, all of the Sims in the household were standing at attention near where they were when I last saved, with almost full meters. At first, this doesn't sound bad, but having to remember what each Sim was doing when I saved was kind of difficult. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but what if the Sim was close to finishing another level in a skill and you don't remember which skill they were working on? It can take a little game time to get things back on track. The meters being full can throw off a Sims schedule as well depending upon what time of day you saved before installing University. Only limiting college to a certain age group was kind of sad too. Sims who had just became adults before the expansion pack was installed are simply out of luck. One final negative is something I also have an issue with in the original game. The lack of clothing choice when a Sim goes through an age transition is kind of lame. It would be nice if a window similar to what comes up when your Sim is shopping would pop up so that you can choose the initial clothing of the new age like you do when you first create the Sim. Just randomizing it leads to the need to spend more game time sending the Sim shopping which isn't too terrible a thing, but sometimes time is a luxury (hope that large sentence made sense). Also, a modest Sim might be horrified by what a randomizer might pick!
  Overall, those negatives do not prevent the game from being enjoyable and the new features are a very welcome addition.
  
  
• Some good, some tedious
  By A2HVC1IXR56PPS on 2006-10-03
  This expansion adds some good things, like extra aspiration slots and multiple aspiration locks, some good new items and social interactions (Hang Out in particular is nice so that you don't have to babysit your sims' chatting).
  
  The college part, however, is tedious. It's optional, of course, but your sims do get some reward for going - the extra aspiration slots are available only to college graduates, as are the new jobs. The thing about it is that, in the non-university portion of the game, a day of sim time is roughly equal to about a year of a sim's life (baby phase is about 2 days, toddler about 4, child about 8, teen about 14, adult about 27, and elder [unfortunately] lasts somewhere between 30 and 33 days). While the correlation between sim days and years is not exact, it's close enough.
  
  The university part, however, is eight semesters, each weighing in at 3 sim days, plus an optional 3 days after graduation before you have to leave campus. Using the 1 day = 1 year idea, your sims go to college for somewhere between 24 and 27 years!! The problem is that Maxis chose to focus way in on a small portion of the sims' lives, where they really aren't doing very much besides studying.
  
  I don't play the Sims 2 regularly, but when I do play it I usually start out sending a few sims to college and then progressively getting more and more sick of how much that portion of the game takes over. I either just stop sending my sims to college or I use a cheat object to get things over with in a more timely fashion. This expansion would have been far more tolerable if they had not tried to break it down into four years with two semesters each. College should only go for about one quarter to one half the time that it actually takes, and unfortunately, that makes it very boring after you send a couple sims there, especially if you have any interest in keeping the various sims in your neighborhoods aging at a somewhat realistic pace relative to each other.
  
  One other point of note is that the dorms put a serious performance burden on the game. My normal households run pretty smoothly, but the dorms are really choppy, probably because there are usually some 12-15 sims in them at any given time.
  
  Bottom line: the items and interactions that come with this expansion pack do make it somewhat worthwhile, but the University portion itself was not thought out very well. It tends to bog down gameplay more than help it, unfortunately.
  
  
• Near flawless install, with few exceptions
  By A8MW7VX4LFJ5D on 2005-03-03
  The installation recommends backing up the existing files (mainly the user files which is in your documents and settings folder in Windows XP). After setup completes, it then checks to make sure your Sims2 is up to date (possibly the orginal Sims2 update patch? not sure). The one thing that is lacking after install is the "Check for updates" website...it is replaced with a "Technical Support" website that didn't list any patches or updates, if available.
  
  I failed to backup my Sims2 before installing the expansion pack, but I didn't run into any major problems that couldn't be fixed on my own. I had several pairs of speakers so I could dance to the stereo in other rooms, but when I loaded my saved game for the first time, the speakers were blaring 'store music' even when the stereo wasn't turned on and I couldn't turn it off without trading in the speakers and rebuying them. I didn't have any problems with other original objects acting strangely after installing Sims University.
  
  I haven't really played the University part of this game yet, but I am happy with the new objects that are available in the "knowledge" section. Drums, Guitars...I'll be happy when I get the dancing cage and disco floor back again. And the new expansion pack that will be out in the Fall looks interesting as well, although we don't see much about it except for the Vampire lady.
  
  I give Sims2 4 out of 5 stars, docking it mainly for having to rebuy a few items to get them to work properly. It's been great for the most part, with slightly longer load times, but still works well with my PC.
  
  
  
  
• Got My money Back
  By A9WP0XVPDGOD8 on 2005-03-03
  This is such a great disappointment from Maxis and EA games. This is so dysfunctional it totally ruins the process that most of us began last year in our new Sim environment. Deeply saddening that this new expansions doesn't even support it's own parent game. But, like all Sims fans, you'll have to own it- just for continuity purposes, if you're anything like me. I myself own all of the original Sims/expansions.
  
  Finally, while the Sims 2 got off to a rough start with most people in the technical installation/playability phase upon first release, Maxis eagerly compensated and counceled via their website, realizing they threw it onto the shelves just a tad too soon. Now that most of us have it running relatively smoothly, here comes University, which will delete any efforts you have made in your original game.
  
  Univerity is a vanity release. It adds nothing substantial to the original game or the environment, nothing really of the 'fun factor.' In fact, its the same model of game just with new wants and animations.
  
  It's important to note that piling up demands on players is why the Sims Online failed to fetch the audiences everyone thought it would. It began with a boom but when players in a massive multi-player environment realized the demands were so incredibly high (i.e. sleep, eat, bathroom, skill, socialize, shower, eat, sleep) they left for games less like a job and more like... a game, including reverting back to their original sims, which, while having the wants and needs factor, at least provided the single player environment to accomodate those needs in.
  
  The Sims 2 kept those sim necessities while adding independent 'wants.' Fulfilling or not fulfilling those can deeply damage your needs, and having multiple Sims (Or big families) can really end up in heated battle to avoid neglecting any one.
  
  So Univerity comes along and adds to the pool of more 'Wants' that must be obtained in order to increase your sims overall mood. Again, there's little addition to the 'fun' factor. In fact I felt the product was a little pointless. However, the promise of the next expansion that takes your Sims out of the hermitage of their neghborhood seems more fun, if Maxis decides to let it be.
  
  
• TS2UPD
  By AATXITG1ER5AZ on 2005-03-08
  I have repeatedly tried to install the EP, to no avail. It hangs up at 67% (TS2UPD.exe) and uninstalls. Their BBS indicatres that the problem is prevelant. After a 20 minute hold on a long distance call to tech support, I just gave up. Have been unable to contact them in any form. I purchased the program as a pre-release from Electronic Arts and am refusing to pay for its return. Fortunately, it was paid for by credit card so payment can be witheld. If you decide to buy it before all the bugs are out, buy locally so it can be returned.
  
  
• Nice idea, bad code.
  By AC6FOAT1S165B on 2005-08-04
  After playing TS2 with the Uni expansion pack since March, I feel future consumers need to be warned:
  
  This expansion pack to the greatest computer game EVER is riddled w/gameplay wrecking bugs that have YET to be addressed by the game's manufacturer despite countless complaints found all over the official site's message boards. A complete lack of communication regarding these well-known bugs/glitches on the part of EA/Maxis has made me and many others loathe to purchase any more products from this company.
  
  It would appear that churning out product, no matter how rushed or flawed, matters more to EA/Maxis than releasing patches that make the game perform as it was purported to.
  
  But one example: University's a great idea, having your sims experience college, cool - except a rampant bug in the game prevents students from graduating! Another prevents a graduated sim from being able to return home without a convoluted workaround. Kind of defeats the purpose, eh?
  
  Amount of time spent playing the game doesn't seem to matter - they can strike at any time.
  
  To date, a list has been compiled on the official website's message board by several game players (many of whom are programmers). The list currently stands at more than 100 known bugs, some that are very minor, but several that can stop gameplay DEAD in its tracks.
  
  Like many, I do not want hacks in my game for any purpose whatsoever. However, I've found that without certain hacks I continually experience gameplay destroying bugs. Fortunately, these unauthorized third party programmers have, of their own generosity, made freely available hack fixes for code errors causing many of these bugs and did so WITHIN WEEKS OF THE GAME'S RELEASE.
  
  But after nearly 6 months, nothing but a few recent sentences from the game's manufacturer - not information, not acknowledgment, not a patch, not a peep. Little else but hype about their next expansion pack. They need to fix the one we've already paid for FIRST.
  
  Do not purchase this expansion pack until a free, stand-alone patch for TS2 University is available from the official website. You will not get your money's worth if you do, sorry. I love this game and am so disappointed in EA/Maxis' treatment of it and of their insanely devoted customer base.
  
  I'm exhausted and disgusted with having to find fixes and workarounds for this game instead of just playing it. Not one more thin dime til I see a free patch.
  
  
• This game is great.
  By A2PSB2JBJHMGC1 on 2005-03-07
  Okay well first off, I've been playing The Sims since they first came out. So I had to get The Sims 2. You just have to have a good video card and lots of space on your computer. Today I got the University expansion and its really fun. I was expecting more furniture and floors and walls and other objects but I was really glad of some of the things they made for build mode. I'm alittle dissapointed that they did not have an actual "Young Adult" age group. Once your sim turns into a teen they have the option to pick up the phone and call college and once they get there they turn into a young adult so you either go to college and be a young adult or stay home and be a teen. This game really isn't an expansion, its more of a add on to the core of The Sims 2. When you get to college you can pick to rent a house or live in a dorm with other people. Once you do that if you want you can call the sorority or the fraternity and you can try and get into The Greek System. You find a computer, pick your major, and then from there you have to build up skills and write a term paper which is pretty annoying and do your assignements and if you do that you will graduate from freshman to a sophmore and so on. So I'd recommend this game even though it is a bit challenging because you don't have much if any free time to spend shopping or socializing because by the time you finish your studys, eat, shower, and watch tv to get your happiness up you are to tired to do anything else. But still this game is alot of fun. You should buy this game.
  
  
• It was good, but not great.
  By A2S97KSRZ424TE on 2006-08-06
  This was my first time buying a Sims 2 expansion pack and I'm rather glad I waited and bought it at a surprisingly low price of $20. This expansion pack was fun and exciting while your sims are at college, but it gets dull after a while. The work you need in order to get a 4.0 average is fairly easy, but time consuming. The best strategy I found is to just meet up the required skills, attend class, type up one term paper (it boosts up your grade dramatically), and influence a person to do your homework. By then, you'll be ensured to have an A+.
  But after a while, doing the same thing for the same semester is . . . well, boring.
  One thing I also found odd is creating new college students 'cause they don't have any parents.
  Anyway, the hours of gameplay trying to graduate is ridiculous. It's hard enough trying to maintain decent grades, but with the popularity aspiration (that my Sim had), she wanted a damn party every day. It's hard to keep up with a social life.
  After graduating, however, it seems like your Sim never went to college at all. Sure, you had a major and everything, but it seems like it had no point.
  
  
• The most addicting expansion yet!
  By AVSWEYTHJXA4 on 2005-03-04
  I've only had this expansion for a day but I've played long enough to say that it's AWESOME! The new "young adult" age group fills in one of the age gaps The Sims 2 was missing. Now if they would have the "middle age" group it'd be perfect.
  
  Anyway, I was impressed with the load times. I was expecting to wait half the day for my houses and neighborhoods to load, but it actually took less time loading than the original Sims did (if you had all the expansions for it).
  
  Influencing other sims is an interesting new feature, and the new interactions like kicky bag, pillow fights, and hanging out makes it easier to make new friends and the cell phone makes it easier to keep them.
  
  I was hopping there would be more new furniture, clothes, hairstyles, wallpaper and stuff but all the other stuff on the expansion more than makes up for it. It really is like another game all together. I'm addicted to The Sims all over again.
  
  
  
  
  
• JAWESOME!
  By A33E5E298WDR8R on 2005-03-12
  This is an excellend expansion. For items it doesnt offer as much as I'd like it too, but the College life is the main part of the game. And it's awesome. I found leading my sims through 4 years of college; studying, hanging out, burning lobster thermidor, was much more fun than the traditional game mode. The only downside to this game is the technical specs.
  
  Now, be warned that if you have a computer that meets this game's system requirements, it's gonna run pretty slow. Loading times, 5 mins plus. I have a custom laptop with an AMD Athlon 3000+ processor, 1024mb RAM, and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Graphics Card, and this game runs great. loading times are less than a minute. But, the other day i played it at my friend's house, on his Compaq computer with 512mb RAM and Pentium 4. Badness! Choppy, slow, all that.
  
  My point being, if you dont have a nice (or very nice) computer, just be warned of the slowness and stuff. If you have a nice gaming computer, no worries ^_^
  
  Overall, this is an excellent game and i would recommend it to anybody in possesion of The Sims 2.
  
  
• Fun stuff
  By AYJNY01NFTVX3 on 2006-11-09
  The University expansion pack is fun. You get to pick majors for your Sims, but you have to make sure that they do their term papers and study or else they get kicked out of college. There are also interesting scholarships that your Sim can qualify for, like one for alien abductees. I would recommend that you only try playing a couple of Sims at a time or else you will probably end up getting some of your Sims expelled due to Academic Probation.
  
  
• A deep dissapointment.
  By on 2005-03-05
  I, like many others, have been waiting for this expansion pack for The Sims 2 for a long time. When I got it this afternoon when I arrived home from school, I was VERY dissapointed. The gameplay is horrible, and worst of all, BORING. The load times are UNBEARABLE. And there are next to NO new objects unlike the original The Sims +150 every expansion pack. It feels like Maxis just threw this one together at the last minute and said "Okay, we're done! Time to work on the next sucky sequal to an okay game."
  
  In short, don't buy this game if you can avoid it. I almost returned it, but I wasn't able to because I didn't want to uninstall it and take it back because I'd loose all my files. Being the stupid girl that I am, I thought "Well, it's the Sims! It's gonna be great!" Well, that was rather foolish of me.
  
  I give it... a two... out of five.
  
  
• Good concept, but unsupported product fails over time
  By A38E8U61U6D6NT on 2005-08-03
  I've been a big fan of the sims games, having purchased and enjoyed all the games in the original Sims 1 series. Sims 2 promised to be a great step forward, and I was really looking forward to the first expansion pack. While the University EP has some attractive features, they fail over time in extended game play, and Maxis has not provided appropriate customer support.
  
  A lot of the features mentioned in the marketing materials are interesting ones, and the new influence system is obviously a major game play addition, however I have been among the many afflicted by a number of the bugs in this product. Although I have a solid gaming machine (3GHz P4, 2GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro video card w 128MB VRAM) and do not play with hacks, mods, downloads or cheats, I have had the following experiences:
  
  1. Sims attend a final exam and return, receiving their score and funding for the term - but a few minutes later, a second message appears stating that the sim has failed their classes, as they missed the final exam. I have worked around this by constantly checking everyone who returns to see if the sim is listed as having a "final exam in progress" and returning them to the exam - but they then quickly accelerate through all their remaining terms until they either flunk or graduate, all without ever allowing me to play them during any of the remaining terms! This is really frustrating, since playing them during the terms is obviously the point of the game.
  
  2. One of my sims, who had been attending classes normally and doing well, suddenly received a message saying it was "high time she returned to the real world" at which point she turned into an adult and left university. Her memories do not show her having attended at all.
  
  3. Sims who stop playing kicky bag (which they frequently start playing autonomously) cause an invisible kicky bag to be deposited somewhere on the lot, and it cannot be seen or removed. In my worst case, it blocked the portals by which sims leave the lot for classes, forcing me to abandon the entire dormitory. In another case, it merely blocked a TV and a sofa, which wasn't so bad.
  
  4. I could not add members to my top level greek house (according to the guide, I should be able to have thousands of members once the top level is achieved - I couldn't get as many as were allowed in the first level). One greek house member lost all her memories, but I was able to deal with it by exiting without saving.
  
  5. Two - no, three - of my teen sims entering university aged to young adults but kept their acne, although they could no longer apply acne cream to fix this.
  
  6. Some (pre-made Maxis) dorms get bills and some don't. I'm no longer sure which is supposed to happen but it's certainly not consistent.
  
  Then I have bugs in the main neighborhood as well; in fairness to Maxis it's possible that these are problems with the base game that merely showed up at that time.
  
  7. Regardless of the cooking skill of the sim, sometimes the refrigerator only offers instant meals - nothing else.
  
  8. The repoman shows up and repossesses some items (leaving sims with a bad memory or an aspiration failure) although no bills are present on the lot or available in the mailbox.
  
  9. The maid began reaching into the dishwasher and taking out a cup, then putting it back in again - over, and over, and over! She just stood there all day moving the coffee cup back and forth and never did any cleaning.
  
  10. The Headmaster simply disappeared while playing the Headmaster scenario - I keep calling to get him to come again on subsequent nights, but he never shows up.
  
  11. Sims die in the main neighborhood without leaving either a tombstone or an inheritance - however the pictures of dead sims remain on the family screen in neighborhood view. Some existing tombstones simply disappear for no apparent reason.
  
  At first, I assumed that some of these were minor glitches, but I did some more investigation as the problems kept recurring and found that these are actually known bugs which have never been patched (more than four months after product release!). Some people don't experience them at first, but they seem to crop up after you've been playing enough to trigger them (sufficient numbers of sims and memories). Compared to some players, I've actually been fairly lucky - some bug lists for this game are up well over a hundred items - but I've had enough problems to basically stop playing the game until Maxis releases a patch. It was fun to play University while I was able to, but the first issues I mentioned with the final exam pretty much mean that I can't, so at this point I regard it as a waste of money.
  
  As much as I liked the game (while it was playable), I can't honestly recommend it to anyone until there is a patch available to address at least some of the biggest game play problems.
  
  
• A boring, buggy bust
  By AZ2K08MNJFR16 on 2005-08-04
  What a shame. As a hardcore Sims fan, I was too thrilled to learn that University would be the first expansion. Having had a great University experience in RL, I was excited that Maxis (the developers of the game) were going to try out a completely new idea and give us a new life stage and new jobs. Also I was eager to see all the new experiences my Sims would have in college.
  
  I'll cut right through the long sililoquy of disappointed. This is a very boring game. It's way too long and just drags on to the point where you don't even want to send your Sims to University anymore because it's just going through the motions and you'd rather be doing something else. Seeing as how sending your Sims to University is the ENTIRE POINT OF THE GAME, the entire game fails to live up to expectations.
  
  After a while, I started to experience glitches and bugs such as invisible dormmates, the "jump bug", etc. Nothing too big but you would think that as how this is the biggest game from the biggest games developer company, they would have the foresight and the know-how to fix it.
  
  The game doesn't add much to the Sims 2 series as a whole but make their lives longer and not that interesting. Even the objects aren't all that great. The pool table is cool--the first couple of times but after watching the animations over and over again, it gets lame and repetitive. The instruments were a big disappointment and now I don't even bother to put them in my houses anymore because annoying guests always make a beeline to perform on them. And you can't even have a real band like they (falsely) advertised before the game came out. That's one of the main things I was looking forward to.
  
  I'm really disappointed in this game and really think a lot less of the game developers for even putting it out and thinking we'd be stupid enough not to recognize that this was a shoddily assembled piece of crap. I know they are coming out with more expansions but if they are anything like this, you can bet that I will not be buying them.
  
  
• Not the best idea
  By AKW83DIPIIUZF on 2006-06-03
  A little boring, the time in college takes a long time. Your sim needs to study and earn skills to pass college which leaves little time to enjoy taking your sim through the college life. You have 72 hours after graduation to move out, which means you can live the college life in that time, but you have to go through such a long period of studying and stuff to get to this point. It's fairly easy to be 4.0 GPA, but I've had lower. It might be worth it for the objects as Maxis put out a lot of nice clothes with this, I'm a teenager and the clothes in this expansion pack appealed to me way more than the original ones. Overall, if you spend a lot of time in 3 speed (the fastest speed it can go) college life will take you about 2 - 3 hours of continuous play to graduate from. Once I've used University I don't want to play sims that haven't gone to college, so I would probably say it was worth it... I only regret paying the $40 for it when it first came out.
  
  
• Awsome Game!!!
  By on 2005-03-02
  This was a great game I got it yesterday.I've played it for hours and hours and hours.The whole point of the game is that your sim is in collage and you have to try to pass every semister of your sims collage years.The only thing i didn't like is every semester is really slow even if you speed the time up.Overall this was a very good game.I would recomend that every sim fan to buy this game.
  
  
• Tricky Install
  By A2NMIT5PQ47W9 on 2005-03-18
  If you've installed the additional items and characters available from the official website you may have problems installing the University Expansion Pak. When you get to the install part that says "This product will now ensure that your existing installation is up to date" it will come up with an error and say "update process did not complete successfully. Installation will now terminate." Then it uninstalls University Expansion Pack. I fixed this by uninstalling the entire original Sims 2 game and all my saved characters and reinstalling Sims 2, the 16meg patch, then University Expansion. Will think twice before downloading charters, items, or buying another expansion pack for SIMS 2. EA Tech support had no clue and asked for the specs on my computer, which is running XP with 2GB AMD Athlon, 1GB of RAM, ATI 9000 Atlantis 128MB video Card (with newest driver), and over 120GB of free drive space. Plays well after all these steps.
  
  
• WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF GAMEPLAY
  By on 2005-08-09
  I admit I was skeptical when I bought Uni since I had read all the reviews about bugs and glitches. But this game was AWESOME!!!
  
  You get to send your sims to college.
  You can live in a dorm, or a greek house, or a rented house. There is a new concept that allows your sims to influence other sims. You can make them write your term paper or pull pranks. And the new mp3 players help. When your "fun" meter is down, you can just select to "listen to mp3 player" and it goes really fast up!
  
  And if you live in a dorm, you never have to cook because there's someone already working there. But if you want some extra pocket change, you can elect to work in the cafeteria or perform music on the guitar/bass/drums for tip, or be a tutor or personal trainer to someone.
  
  At the end of your senior year, after your final exam, you have 72 hours to pack up your stuff and leave. But during that time you can P A R T Y ! If you select the telephone, you can choose to throw a graduation party and everyone shows up in their caps and gowns. And after you move out of college, and move in a real home. There is a career reward for college, which is a diploma and you can hang it up and read it and it will say what college your graduated from, what you majored in, and if you graduated with full honors.
  
  And the new careers are so cool!
  
  I had a guy who majored in mathematics, and he became a natural scientist and got to the top of that career. The highest level for it is "Ecological Guru". You only have to work on Wednesdays and you get 10,500 simoleons!!!
  
  You are also able in neighborhood to move different families in the same house, so you don't have to build up their relationship and select "Propose >Move In".
  
  All in all, this game is worth the $30 I paid for. If you are addicted to the Sims 2 original, trust me, you will love this expansion. My game has only crashed once, and I wasn't even using it, my brother was. B U Y T H I S G A M E ! ! !
  
  

• The Sims 2 Revised: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)
• The Sims 2: University (Prima's Official Strategy Guide)
• PC Gamer (1-year)
• The Sims 2 Happy Holiday Stuff

• The Sims 2: Open for Business Expansion Pack
• The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack
• The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack
• The Sims 2: Nightlife Expansion Pack
• The Sims 2: Bon Voyage