I'm curious what you all do when it comes time to send your teens to college. Obviously, University came with three pre-made universities that match up reasonably well with the three base game hoods. But what about, say, Riverblossom Hills? Or any custom hoods? (the "mysterious" Sedona, Polgannon, Widespot, Old Town, etc.) I'd much rather not "repeat myself" and end up with all the playable students from Sim State (or any of the other universites) in multiple hoods (I don't play any megahoods). What do you all do when it comes to matching up a university with a base hood? Do you download universities or simply build your own from the ground up?

I don't use those game ones anymore that's for sure. I only use custom made uni's now since not only are the shipped ones badly built they are full off way too many ugly dormies.

Brainania by Moo: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=426826 Being custom it makes its own unique dormies. I just remove and add buildings to change things up. I am too lazy to make one from scratch.

I may give Peni's a go too. http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=571818 The empty one though, since Peni's aesthetics of sims does not match mine.

I of course envisioned people adding LGU to Widespot, but its concept would also work well with Riverblossom Hills or any of the rural HBG hoods, such as Meadow Creek. A land grant university is specifically a state university funded by a grant of land from the government, in order to provide affordable local higher education to rural areas; so it wouldn't be a good match with Belladonna Cove; or with Polgannon, since a land grant university is an American thing and Polgannon is quintessentially British.

If your main concern is not having the same premades, if you like the physical plants of either LGU or Quaddington, both offer empty versions.

I usually just stick Sim State on any neighborhood. No particular reason I just do

I put Academie le Tour with Veronaville, La Fiesta Tech with Strangetown and Sim State with Pleasantview. I only play Veronaville of those three now. For other neighbourhoods I created my own, adding buildings as I need them.

I suppose my "main concern" is actually not having to build 12000 universities from the ground up. But I didn't even realize Land Grant even had a populated option (obviously I wasn't paying much attention!), so that's intriguing.

Right now I'm mostly looking for something that would match up nicely with my Four Corners/Bitville, as the two resident teens will reach the end of their current life stage before the end of the first Winter. And I suppose for that specific case, I would prefer a populated university, since there are only two teens heading that way (next oldest is barely a toddler, as the hoods came completely devoid of children), and it might feel a little lonely if it's just them with a llama, a cow, a cheerleader, and a streaker.

As cool as Quaddington looks, I don't really have a hood for which it'd be a good match! I suppose the closest would be Strangetown, but there's already La Fiesta for that, and attaching more than one college to the same hood just feels redundant.

Most of the time, if I use a Uni in a Maxis hood, it's Sim State for me, too. I like the NPCs there, don't mind the layout, and can add my CC community uni buildings with no problems. Since my kids go to state schools in real life, it just seems normal for me to use a State college.

The other times, I'll make my own custom college Uni. This can be more challenging since I can't use existing buildings in the hood itself, and all too often, I find that I want to add MORE buildings because I want a tiny lot to fit in just the right place, and I build it myself because I have something in mind. Or as I'm making lots, it occurs to me, "There really should be a _________ lot here." There is is a certain sort of rewarding feeling when I do finish.

If I use a custom hood, I vary between the two options. I recently spent weeks creating my own custom college hood, though. It was a bit of a challenge since I wanted a terrain amenable to many beach lots, and this particular terrain was designed by the creator to sit a little low. As a result, I wound up with beachiness around lots where I didn't want to use a beach. I learned a lot from that; for instance, be careful using ponds that go up to the edge of a lot, and watch the pond's depth. The best result is often to make a lot at least a couple of tiles away from the lot's edge, and make it JUST deep enough for fish, but that's about it.

I haven't played Veronaville for at least seven years, so can't be of much help there, but I admit to have been obvious with Strangetown and used La Fiesta. (I know ... sand ... sand.)

Rosawyn, you remove nodormieregen and it will make you dormies, one for each dorm door. I use default face templates so I don't get the really ugly templates.

I don't really want dormies, though. That's why I got nodormieregen in the first place! Dormies, like townies, kinda creep me out because they don't age. Maybe I'll make a few custom ones who are vampires and zombies or something...

There are cleaned and fixed uni templates at http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html
They are coming with fixed premade playables but without ugly dormies and if you have nodormieregen mod they will not spawn.
I am currently playing new hood with this LFT template and Klara Vonderstein is my horizontal legacy founder.
Not far yet, on first generation, her daughter Helga (who is copy of mom) had teen birthday yesterday, today will her husband and Helga's dad turn to elder. Will be interesting...
Okay, back to theme. I am playing without any townies, all necessary friends for promotions Klara got from uni.

We made Quadington University for Sedona, but of course, it can be attached to any neighborhoods. You know, both neighborhoods are a little bit "mysterious".
If you don't want any zombies, we have an empty version of Quadington University. And also a no dormies/NPCs version.

I'm currently playing just Riverblossom (plus my custom neighborhood, for testing purpose only, so no subs attached), and I've added Brainania by Mootilda. I still didn't send anyone in there, since I'm playing 'The Beginning of Riverblossom' and I like to pretend the uni was founded later.
I really like the layout and the lots, I'm gonna make same testing to see if the game spawns secret members or dormies.
Anyway I'll download more custom uni, just to be ready if I move to other neighborhoods :P

I like trying different things. I did the obvious match-ups for the three base game 'hoods when I first played them, so now if I start up a new version, I pick a different combo. I play Veronaville with Sim State, I paired Mountainside Valley with LFT, I want to at some point play Strangetown with LGU... I'm not a big fan of most of the later EAxis 'hoods, just can't get into them, but to me either Riverblossom Hills or Desiderata Valley could go with Academie Le Tour, since I get a similar cooler climate vibe from them, while Belladonna Cove or Bluewater Village would seem to fit better with SSU. Pleasantview would probably be fun to combine with LFT - worlds colliding!

I haven't seen any secret members. Without the nodormierespawn it will spawn one dormie for each uni door.

I just keeping using Sim State for my Blue Point neighborhood, but I had to redo every one of those buildings. I've yet to redo the dorms as I have sims currently in them. I've packaged them so I can use them again in other Sim States for other hoods. I may try something different with Sedona. I never use La Fiesta (though I may have to do some redesign there as well...).

I must make a custom university sub-hood - It's something I've wanted to do for a while. I should make one to go with Polgannon.

Little Carping has two custom uni sub-hoods - built especially for it.

They're interesting projects, to be sure... I'm still gradually plugging away at my Collegiate Gothic project (which will eventually yield an Ivy League campus in a sleepy New England-esque coastal town), and it's actually pretty useful, since there's so much variety in terms of the things to work on that it becomes almost impossible to get bored with the project entirely.

Yes, that's a lovely project you're working on Zar. I think I'd go for an English-style campus university.

After trying all the universities once, I've mostly tended to use Academie LeTour. I've also created a couple of custom universities, such as Intergalactic, which was specifically for aliens and had a very scientific focus. I'm currently adding all three basegame universities to Sheffield and giving each of them a different focus: Academie LeTour is an elite private college that also accepts Sims who have at least two 'serious' scholarships and will eventually focus on the humanities; La Fiesta Tech will be a technical college for science students; and Sim State accepts any Sim who doesn't totally flunk high school, and consequently has a very high dropout rate.

It doesn't bother me if universities don't match the neighbourhood because I figure plenty of students choose a university somewhere that's completely unlike their hometown anyway.

I have megahoods and paired up the following:

Pleasantview/Downtown/Bluewater Village + Sim State University
Strangetown + La Fiesta Tech
Riverblossom Hills/Belladonna Cove/Desiderata Valley + Academie Le Tour

I do wish it was possible to send Sims from different hoods to different colleges and then move them between hoods (without attaching them) - like if Johnny Smith went off to Sim State but moved away to Belladonna Cove after graduation.

You can by extracting and cloning him.

True! I have done that before. I'm more upset by the principle of thing - the fact that I can't do it without corrupting the game or dealing with an enormous uberhood. I settle for the megahoods instead - much more manageable!

Some of the Maxis sims are already up for download, or use to be. I know I grabbed Malcolm Landgrab from somewhere.

I didn't realize I didn't ha nodormie regen, that's why I got 6 dormies + 3 random college students (all of 'em secret society members).
When I went to the secret society for the first time, I got like 30 more secret members because the game creates 'em according to maxnumofvisitingsims!
I didn't interact with any of them, just closed the game, opened SimPE and erased the extra students.
Then I used the cheat just before entering the secret society and I got just 5 Sims (2 of them are my dormies as well), I can't stand to have so many random sims in the game.