SimCity Academy

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The uniform Sims wear when attending Private School

SimCity Academy, introduced in The Sims 2, is a private school that children and teenagers can attend. Players have to invite the Headmaster over for dinner, schmooze and feed him to have their children or teens with a minimum grade of C be accepted into private school. The family will not be charged for having kids and teens in private school.

Kids and teens in private school will change into a uniform before getting on the school bus.

Pros

• Teens who are in private school will start teen careers at Level 2.
• Performance awards are skill points rather than a small sum of money.
• A day at private school takes less of a toll on needs.

Cons

• Homework is somewhat more stressful, which leads to a large fun drop if the Sim is left unattended for a long time.
• Preparing for the headmaster can be stressful if the house is large or if the Sims begin to prepare their food late.

Getting into private school

Any child or older Sim can call the Headmaster using the "Invite Headmaster" interaction on the phone if there is a student on the lot that has a grade of C or higher. The Headmaster then will arrive at 5 p.m. and a 6 hour scenario will start when he is greeted. The player has to do three tasks to get the family's kids/teens accepted into private school.

To perform any of the tasks, click the Headmaster and select an interaction under the "Entertain" category.

Dinner

The player must have their Sim serve a meal. The higher the cooker's Cooking skill, the more points the scenario will get. Burned food will not earn a good score.

Tour of the House

This task can earn 40 to 50 points. Show every room in the house; rooms with higher Environment scores are worth more points. Unlike schmoozing, the tour can only have a neutral or positive effect on the Headmaster's score; if he dislikes a room, he may not award it any points, but he will not subtract any.

Schmoozing

This last element involves building the Headmaster's relationships with the household members. The more Daily Relationship build, the better the Schmooze score. Talking around the dinner table will contribute to this score. Another strategy is talking to the Headmaster, though this will not improve the score by much. There are four kinds of schmoozing; there is schmoozing about work, about school, about politics, and about money. The latter two require a high relationship with the headmaster, and will give a high score if successful.

Bonus Scoring

Getting the Headmaster to do any of these things once will earn an extra 10 points:

• Get him into the hot tub (though it can be hard to get him out).
• Get him to drink coffee.
• Have a drink from the bar.

Tips

• Never, ever make chef salad for the headmaster. No matter who he is (as it varies for each game), the Headmaster absolutely hates chef salad. He prefers pork chops, lobster and salmon.

• It's a good idea to have one parent at home, giving the tour, while the other parent cooks the food. Try to keep the kid out of the way. Alternatively, the player can have the child give the tour. The Headmaster likes children.

• If the player's Sim is pregnant and they want the child to get in to private school, making one of the parents study cooking and the other to get a nice job will improve their score in a future tour.

• If the player is using the boolprop cheat, the player can make their Sim best friends with the Headmaster. This fills the Schmooze requirement. As long as the Sims give him a nice tour, the children are guaranteed to be accepted into private school regardless of the quality of the dinner.

• Check to make sure that all doors are unlocked when the Headmaster visits. If he finds himself locked out, he will reject the kid outright.

• The Headmaster scenario can be glitchy, so call close to 4 pm. Save just before calling, and don't save while the scenario is in progress. That way, if it glitches, you should be able to exit without saving, and try again.

• If you use the coffeecuphack from More Awesome Than You!, it may be a good idea to remove or disable it before calling the Headmaster, unless you don't plan to serve him coffee or espresso. Occasionally, a "jump bug" may occur when a Sim washes a coffee cup in a sink. While this is only a mild annoyance if it happens to a household member, the Headmaster will vanish if it happens to him.

• Serve the meal first. While dinner-table converstation with the Headmaster will contribute to the Schmooze score, it will also significantly increase the amount of time the Sims will take to eat the meal.

• Be sure to always choose Entertain: Call for Dinner from the Headmaster's pie menu. Never choose Call to Dinner: Everyone from the meal's pie menu. This will only earn you three points, as it did not count as part of the scenario.

• Testingcheatsenabled can be used to make the Headmaster selectable. This may be useful if he gets in a hot tub and will not get out.