How Do You Succeed With UL???!!!

ARRensch

Okay I'm a bit peeved rn

My sim was born with the genius trait which I thought would be perfect to test with UL since I've had the expansion for months and haven't really tried it out yet.

I had her max out her skills with the peg box as a toddler, I had her consistently reading logic books and I got her logic skill to around 8. She had straight A's all through elementary and high school and always made honor role. She killed the aptitude test with a great score. At Uni she skipped parties to study and gain skill in science (which was her major) and I think she got that skill to 5 or 6 by the end of the semester. I sent her into tests with a good mood and chose 'work hard'. Between classes, she played with the hacky sack so she would have enough fun to not get stressed.

So you'd think this genius sim who's succeeded in everything academically and worked hard and passed all the tests and has high skill points should be able to graduate with an A, right?

Well, you would be wrong because despite the hours upon hours of work I put into getting her to succeed, she ended up with a B. I devoted her whole life to this and she gets a B! This is just asinine and I am salty.

How the h-e double hockey sticks do I get a sim to score an A? Was it a glitch? Was I doing something wrong? I'm frustrated because I swear she deserved an A.

igazor

If you look under the career tab, you will see a sim's academic performance all the way through the term until after final exams. Was she running or even close to running an A the entire time? Actually the entire time is impossible, I mean after getting through the initial plateaus of C and B because no one starts out at the higher levels on the first sim day or two.

Studying and practicing with the major-related objects (the skeleton for Science/Med) help prevent a sim's performance from tanking as of course do being in classes early/on time and in good moods with their needs taken care of. But in my experience it's really skilling up in addition to all of that during the Uni term that drives up performance and grades. Is Science the only major related skill they worked on and leveled up the entire time they were there? How about Gardening and Fishing? Actually I almost never make my own sims fish for personal reasons or unless they are going after Death Fish, but they can take a class on it or read the skill books to develop that one. Note that starting out Uni with Level 10 in these skills or at a very difficult to progress level like 8 or 9 already doesn't really do them any favors on their academic performance. I also believe I've read about a bug where leveling up on the Science Skill (possibly depending on how its done) does not grant the academic performance gains that it should like the other skills do.

If they get friendly with their professor, there are usually extra credit projects available to be worked on if needed.

Or it's possible they "choked" under pressure and blew the final exam.

Or this could admittedly be a glitch. In one instance or two out of many, I've had sims' academic performance meters not get cleared after the final exam. So in between that and when the grades actually came out on Saturday, their performance decreased even though there shouldn't have been any need to study or skill up any longer during that period. In one case, my sim left the final exam building early and I couldn't get them back inside. To fix more obvious things like that and for those not averse to using mods, NRaas DebugEnabler has an Academic Degree command that can be used to set the credit completion and grade level properly, for each major, after the Uni term is over and the grades are posted.

ARRensch

igazor wrote: »

If you look under the career tab, you will see a sim's academic performance all the way through the term until after final exams. Was she running or even close to running an A the entire time? Actually the entire time is impossible, I mean after getting through the initial plateaus of C and B because no one starts out at the higher levels on the first sim day or two.

Studying and practicing with the major-related objects (like the skeleton for Science/Med) help prevent a sim's performance from tanking as of course do being in classes early/on time and in good moods with their needs taken care of. But in my experience it's really skilling up in addition to all of that during the Uni term that drives up performance and grades. Is Science the only major related skill they worked on and leveled up the entire time they were there? How about Gardening and Fishing? Actually I almost never make my own sims fish for personal reasons or unless they are going after Death Fish, but they can take a class on it or read the skill books to develop that one. Note that starting out Uni with Level 10 in these skills or at a very difficult to progress level like 8 or 9 already doesn't really do them any favors on their academic performance. I also believe I've read about a bug where leveling up on the Science Skill (possibly depending on how its done) does not grant the academic performance gains that it should like the other skills do.

If they get friendly with their professor, there are usually extra credit projects available to be worked on if needed.

Or it's possible they "choked" under pressure and blew the final exam.

Or this could admittedly be a glitch. In one instance or two out of many, I've had sims' academic performance meters not get cleared after the final exam. So in between that and when the grades actually came out on Saturday, their performance decreased even though there shouldn't have been any need to study or skill up any longer during that period. In one case, my sim left the final exam building early and I couldn't get them back inside. To fix more obvious things like that and for those not averse to using mods, NRaas DebugEnabler has an Academic Degree command that can be used to set the credit completion and grade level properly, for each major, after the Uni term is over and the grades are posted.

Thanks! She has no gardening or fishing skills. I didn't really think about those, maybe that's what did her in. Rip. I'm sending her back to try again (apparently I can't have her retake science so I'll send her for technology this time) so maybe I'll have her chat up with her professors too.

igazor

ARRensch wrote: »

Thanks! She has no gardening or fishing skills. I didn't really think about those, maybe that's what did her in. Rip. I'm sending her back to try again (apparently I can't have her retake science so I'll send her for technology this time) so maybe I'll have her chat up with her professors too.

Again if not averse to using mods, I think you could reset her degree and have her try again. I'm also pretty sure that sims can major in the same thing twice, with improved grades being the goal the second time, but I've never had any of mine try that. Not sure if it's one of the mods that allows for that.

For Tech, the relevant skills are Logic and Handiness.

Yes, Uni is flawed in many ways. But do you think the real life versions work perfectly? One of the reasons I am able to approach these challenges with some extra patience and a sense of humor is that I spent most of the summer after my senior year/graduation myself working to convince the office of academic records at my own Uni that I actually fulfilled the requirements to graduate. They had to be kidding (I thought at first), I was just around three classes short of satisfying the requirements for two majors because I switched gears between practical applied mathematics (computing) and theoretical part way through and had credits coming out of my ears. Somehow we landed on I never took Freshman English (nonsense) and half of my transfer credits had gone missing, then to the part where they kept sending Advanced Placement voucher forms to where we lived when I was in high school and taking the AP tests. No one we knew had lived there for years by that time, who knows what happened to the forms.

When I was in grad school, I was once denied a full student ID card and other benefits because I was deemed a part time student by someone who didn't know what they were doing and didn't want to understand the difference between grad school course credits and undergrad.

Too much of a long story, sorry, but yes it does take some patience to work through bureaucracies like that IRL. So why not in the game?

ARRensch

@igazor That's very true. I myself had a stumble with my credits when applying for college. My high school had a different grading system and it didn't transfer to the college right so all my grades showed up as C's. (I've always been an A student highly liked by my teachers and the idea of that showing up as C's felt like a death sentence.) Thankfully, I managed to clear that up though, but I suppose it would be fitting for the game to be hard like that.

Guess I just feel a bit frustrated and betrayed by the game not going as I was hoping. xD (And yeah, without mods I just get a message something along the lines of "your sim has already successfully completed all the credits for this course".)