The Sims 4 Guides

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

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Have you ever wished you could send all those kids taking up space in the house somewhere else for a while? Maybe you’re playing a Perfect Genetics challenge and need more space in the house because you haven’t had a child with perfect genes yet. Maybe you’re just sick and tired of cleaning up after half a dozen messy rugrats. Whatever your reasons, I have the solution. Ship the kiddos off to boarding school!

Not possible, you say? Oh, ye of little faith! I’m going to show you how to have a fully functional boarding school in The Sims 4. The best part? No add-on packs, custom content, or mods required!

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

What You Will Need

  • At least the base game of The Sims 4. Add-ons and custom content can help make your boarding school look nicer but aren’t necessary.
  • Some building skills or alternatively, access to the Gallery.

Build It and They Will Come

  1. First, you need a boarding school for your Sim children to attend. Pick any lot in any world you want and build one. If you don’t want to bother with building, download one from the Gallery. Your boarding school can be as simple or as fancy as you want but it should have 8 beds and at least the basic necessities Sims need to live (toilet, shower, fridge, etc). Since lots of children will be living there, you may want to add toys for them to play with. It’s a good idea to add things that a school would have, too, like a classroom and library.
  2. Now that you have the building ready, it needs at least one adult Sim living in it. Someone has to educate all those children, after all! You can make a Sim yourself in CAS, download one from the Gallery, or just grab a random townie and stick ’em in the boarding school, whatever floats your boat. The school will likely be too expensive for your adult Sim to afford with just $20k so bring up the cheat menu on the world screen with CTRL+SHIFT+C and type “freerealestate on” before you have your Sim purchase and move into the building.
  3. The boarding school is now ready to take in new students! You can move children and teens over to the boarding school via Manage Worlds. Since a lot of people are still unfamiliar with this process, I’ve got screenshots to help.

Adding the Students

In your household with the child you want to send to boarding school, go to Manage Worlds. You’ll be taken to the world select screen. In the top right corner, select Household Management.

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

You’ll be shown all your played households here by default but you can see all your unplayed households too by clicking the Unplayed tab at the top. Both your active household and your boarding school household should be here but if it isn’t, just look under Unplayed. Select your active household with the child you want to send to the boarding school.

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

You’ll be taken to this screen where you can see all your household’s details. Select Transfer Sims Between Households.

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

Now find your boarding school household in the Select A Household section on the right and select that household.

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

Select your child Sim that you want to move to the boarding school and select Transfer Sim(s).

How to Add Boarding Schools to The Sims 4

Voila! Your child Sim is now living at your boarding school and being taught and cared for by the adult Sim there.

Some Things to Keep in Mind

  • This exact same method also works for orphanages and nursing homes. Just build a nursing home or orphanage instead and move babies, toddlers, and elders over in the same way.
  • You can send up to 7 children/teens to the boarding school before the household is full. After that, you’ll have to place another boarding school with a new educator in the world for more children and teens to attend.
  • Teens won’t move out of the boarding school on their own when they become young adults, but you can easily move out young adult Sims yourself with the Manage Households menu.
  • It’s a good idea to check up on the boarding school every once in a while so you can either move out young adult Sims or replace the educator with a younger one when they reach elderhood. If your educator dies of old age while there are still children in the house, the game will delete the children and they will disappear from your family tree with no tombstone or urn as if they never existed. This is easily prevented by just replacing the educator when you notice they’ve gone grey.

Recommended (But Not Required) Mod

  • Deaderpool’s MC Command Centre mod can do a variety of things to make running a boarding school easier. It can raise the maximum household limit so your boarding school can hold more than seven students at a time. It can prevent the game from deleting “orphaned” children when your elder educator dies. You can also flag your educator to never age, marry, procreate, or move out of the boarding school. This will ensure that you’ll never have to replace or manage your educator after you initially place him/her in the boarding school.

Just for Fun

  • Try giving uniforms to the kids and teens at your boarding school!

Not a Builder? No Problem!

Look for SnarkyWitch on the Gallery and search for Savant Boarding School in my catalogue! It has everything a group of students need to work, live, and play. Savant Boarding School is CC-free!

About the author

SnarkyWitch

A cranky old lady who prefers the company of cats and Sims over people. Occasionally peeks out from her lair long enough to chuck Sims articles at innocent bystanders.

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