More Awesome Than You!

 ???
Poke me with sticks, but for the life of me, I cannot get my sim kids into private school. Everytime I invite the headmaster over, he shows up, deems the place not good and leaves. Every single time! Even at the motherloaded family living in a mansion!
I call the same day before 4 o'clock even.

Grr.

Something about saving after calling for the headmaster that causes him to glitch.  Also I on the lot debugger tool, there is a reset for the headmaster.

Try to reset with the debugger and then save then call the headmaster.  Don't save again until he leaves.

I'll try that right now and see.

Hope this works.

Is the headmaster showing up, then leaving right away?  That's a bug.

Or are you able to run through the full headmaster scenario, but don't know how to get enough points to satisfy him?  Then you just need some gameplay tips.

It sounds like the 'save bug'. I had this happen once. I invited the headmaster in the morning, and then saved at some point during the day. When he shows up, he immediately and snootily leaves.

Try saving before you call him. Don't save again until after he's accepted the kids into school.

I find the headmaster scenario pretty easy. He arrives, one adult/teen sim greets him, then offers him a tour of the house. another adult/teen sim starts making dinner. By the time the tour is done, dinner should be ready. Call the headmaster to dinner and have your sims eat with him (or if they're not hungry, just have them sit at the table so they talk). By the time the headmaster is done, you should have enough points from the tour and dinner that a few 'chat' interactions should get your kids in.

And serve coffee. You get a 10-point bonus if the headmaster drinks coffee.

Some headmasters are more difficult than others. Vince Walter can be a di jerk. Try schmoozing by someone else if the first sim you send does badly.

With a well-appointed house (i.e., expensive floors and furnishings) and an expensive dish like turkey for dinner, you can usually get in with just a few schmooze points. It's a good idea to start dinner before he arrives in case you burn it on the first try. Also, if you use Dizzy's smart-serve hack, your sim may not make enough servings the first time 'round. And although it's rather gamey, you can use the inventory feature to prepare the meal in advance and put the platter in inventory until you need it.

Finally, in order to get the food points, you need to use the Call to Meal interaction in the Entertain menu rather than the regular call to meal that's associated with the serving platter (it took me some time to discover be told this.   :P

If your sims are poor, then don't forget the buy mode option to move around the furniture. You only need one really nice painting to make this work.

And remember, different areas of the outside count, so move that fountain and statue around the yard to get points!

What's funny about that is that Vince Walter is the Headmaster that usually ends up becoming a friend to my sims. He's all bitchy when he comes to do the review of the family and the home, but always ends up wanting to hang out and be friends later on.

I've never successfully schmoozed a headmaster; my Sims always get red negative signs for it. I find that simply talking to him works though.

Coffee and Drinks are good, they give 10 points each.

Don't forget the "Headmaster in the Hot Tub" bonus.  :D

If you want tips for getting your kids into private - check out this site http://www.jennthesimmergirl.com/privateschool.php. Jenn's highest score is 166.

The hot tub is a sentence of death! Usually if the headmaster gets in, he won't get out until the next morning, and so he misses dinner and coffee.

Well, I managed to "squeek" by and get one kid into private school, and yes I caught the save bug.
*Achoo*  lol
Coffee and dinner were ok, but rohina is dead on about that hot tub.
Sheesh!  I couldn't get the jerk out of the damn thing!
 That's the last time I will send any kids to private school.
To much for my and my sims nerves.

Well, now that' you've done it the right way first, you can use a hack (i use the insimenator) to just plunk the kids in private school, and then cntl-click on the want to register it. :)

The Headmaster is one of the buggiest scenarios in the game.  Here are my tips for "headmaster hygene":

1. Save the game BEFORE inviting the headmaster.
2. Don't invite him over far in advance.  Wait until 4pm or so on the day you want him to arrive.  Espescially don't invite him the night before.  That will virtually guarantee the vanishing headmaster bug.
3. Do not save after you invite him.  That will virtually guarantee the snooty-immediate-rejection bug.
4. Do not save again at all until the scenario is over and he's left the lot.  If something goes wrong, it can bug your lot (use FFS lot fixer).
5. Have somebody right at the curb at 5pm to greet him.  This may mitigate the snooty-immediate-rejection bug, and is part of the next tip.
6. Don't let him out of your sight.  There are objects that he'll get stuck on and you'll be screwed.
7. Keep him away from hot tubs.  You don't want the "headmaster in the hot tub" bonus.
8. If he gets stuck, or disappears or does anything strange, quit without saving to avoid bugging your lot!
9. Turning off free will might be a good idea so you don't have to keep track of your sims and the stupid headmaster and his swarm of bugs at the same time.
10. Complete the scenario as quickly as possible to reduce the likelyhood of something bad happening.  Other posters tips are all good.
11. Don't have social interactions with the headmaster outside the scenario (don't call him on the phone to chat), it can trigger more bugs.  For God's sake, don't move him in or marry him.

Or, once you've done it once or twice and realized that it's pretty easy, and you don't want to risk bugs, just cheat.

Private school has tangible benefits. For one, the kids' needs are less depleted when they get home; also they start teen jobs at level 2.

I'm curious as to how to get a really high score. When I play, the headmaster always leaves once the score passes 90, even when there is significant time remaining.

One of the first things I did when I got the game, was to marry the stupid headmaster.  I never made that mistake again.

The only way I can get a really good score (as in way above what's needed) is by taking him on the tour, smooching and stuffing him with coffee and drink so that the score is nearly 90 and then calling him for dinner.  Last family I played, I gave the tour and filled him up with liquids and had the mother chat a bit with him while dad cooked, and that resulted in approval before dinner was even on the table.  A bit of a disappointment.  :-\

The Headmaster generally starts looking to leave once score passes 90, but if you keep him occupied, you can rack up more points just for the hell of it. It doesn't do anything to do this, though.

Pssh I want them to get the heck outta my house as fast as possible.  No time for any fancy stuff.  Usually after the tour and the sitting with him while he eats is enough to get to 90 then they're gone.

I've gotten a teen with no cooking points living alone in a one room house into private school before.

I use to get my kids into private shcool the old fashion way.  Till one fateful night  at the Goth house.  Alexander was smoozing the headmaster cause I was having trouble getting him to sit down to dinner;meanwhile,his wife took her plate of food outside to eat and she was killed by a ghost.  The idiotic headmaster gives his no acceptance speech while Alexander and his three sons are crying their eyes out.  I swore if I layed eyes on that headmaster again--I would commit Simacide.  The headmaster still lives and I grant private school to those who I know could get in.

I think my high score was something like 127. Good tour, good talking, then finally good dinner. If he has accumulated 90 points by the end of dinner, he'll just leave at that point. If you chitchat with him a bit before actually serving dinner, you can get more points. Mostly I skip that, since i'm not sure what happens if time runs out while he's in the middle of eating dinner.

To be honest, I don't understand why the Headmaster scenario is so hard for people. I play with no hacks related to the situation and it's easy breezy to get the kids into private school. I don't find the situation to be that buggy other than the 'do not save after calling headmaster' bit. Admittedly, I failed my first couple of attempts at it (first time didn't understand what needed to be done and second time experienced the save after calling problem), and I do tend to be a bit of a control freak when he shows up, but I've never had a problem getting all my kids into private school.

Same here. But then again I during the tour I watch the environment score and make sure it's nearly full before I "show room." Bathrooms are easily the best rooms to "show." An expensive toilet, a shower, a cabinet, a sink, a mirror and maaaaybe a cheap painting in a 4x4 space? He goes ape shit over it.

I finally got some kids into private school...I almost didnt make it bc I forgot the doors were locked to visitors...He would follow my sims around...

John Burb is a great schmoozer...

I could be wrong, but I think the best shmoozers are sims with a high interest in school and work.

That could be true. I know my Romance sim with maxed Charisma couldn't schmooze to save his life, but his shy Family sim wife had hte headmaster eating out of his hand.

That could be it too, my sims are usually either family or fortune, which are both logically good people to schmooze about money and school. But Maxis isn't exactly logical...

Ill check what kinda interests John's daughters have bc they tried to schmooze too and they got negative points. 

Really? I've had no problems with it. He wandered away once, and I found him in there. I just "Call Over"'d him, and he came right back inside.

Now I use the Education Spawn of the Insimenator, to move my kids to private school, but before it, I observed a lot the Head Masters, with the Merola's mirror.

When the Head Master comes to the house, all his moods are 50% (social, hunger, bladder, fun, hunger, etc). He is very lonely sim, with very low social and fun moods.

After the dinner, I always increased his moods to 100% with the Multipainting, and he immediately left, giving me 90 points. He didn't even check the houses' rooms.

This would be the mainly cheating method, though, so not all that useful for people who want to get their kids in without cheating (like if they are playing a challenge).

Another thing I suggest is to delete or inventory the BYU controllers before the Headmaster gets to the house. It was probably just a freaky glitch, but I had the Headmaster get stuck in a loop trying to use the bathroom over and over. Had to exit without saving because everything just got wonky and bad.

Yup add that to the list if you have a home business - Locking your doors to visitors will leave HM standing on the doorstep while you try to give him that tour.  Took me a few tries to understand that he wasn't blocked by the family milling around or some stuck object - he was locked out!

You can usually shoo him out of the hottub if he gets in. The 10pt Expresso bonus is fast and easy.

Aren't the schmooze options like flirt in that you can't use each one successfully unless the relationship is high enough? I don't even try schmooze about school until I reckon it's about 20/20.  I've never used the top ones.  I reckon teens or kids with high charisma are the best for greeting and touring.  One of the sim kids who played with the charisma rabbit non-stop.  Maybe because they have the right interest set...   Greeting him with the aspiration specs on is said to help too.

I make a point of making friends with HM after the visit in case he comes again.  (Someone posted "don't do that and don't phone him" - I think that's wrong and it it's right I want to know.)    Marrying HMs is a bad idea if there are going to be any kids on that lot.  Never heard it was totally "a bad thing".  I was thinking about marrying one to Isabella Monty - Patrizio died during the HM tour where Romeo and Mercutio got into private school.  Isabella and the HM got on like a house on fire!

If the HM arrives and doesn't stay - it's bugged according to Pescado.  It's in the Myths thread in the War Room.

Someone above posted a link to a page about how to get a really high score.  Well, I don't care as long as it's high enough, but the person who wrote that page sounds reasonably competent. 

However, they talked about getting the HM to go to the part of a room that had the best environment and said it didn't matter if there was clutter/mess in other parts of the room.  I thought the environment score applied to the whole room.  I thought the thing about putting a bright light next to an expensive painting and having the HM stand close was a sheeple myth. 

So which is true?  Can you get different environment scores in different areas of a room?  Does it depend on how big the room is, how far away the dirty area is from the good area?

Marrying a headmaster was buggy, but has apparently been fixed by  a patch.  The problem was that if you married the headmaster, no one would step up and take his place, and you'd have no option to invite the headmaste over to get any of your other kids into private school.  As far as I remember the only way I could fix the problem was by killing the guy off.
That was a long time ago (base game only), so it's probably not likely to happen anymore.

In addition to that I was disappointed to find that the stupid man had no job, no money and no skills.

Marrying the headmaster *SHOULD* be OK if you have the Phone Hack. That's one of the fixes in the Phone Hack. As long as you don't mind a replacement headmaster spawning, anyway.

What about the FFS lot debugger's "fix AWOL headmaster"?
Does that fix married headmasters, or is it related to that other bug where headmasters don't show up when they said, no matter how many times you invite them?

Married Headmasters is a phone artifact, it won't let you invite the Headmaster because it perceives the resident headmaster as a headmaster already present. The Phone Hack fixes this by doublechecking that the headmaster is, in fact, a reigning headmaster in the NPC family, and not a resident. The "never shows up when invited" is a scenario controller corruption. Fix AWOL Headmaster nukes the corrupted controller, forcing it to respawn.

Not totally reassured there!  Still I may risk it to keep Isabella happy - couldn't live without the phone hack!  I have the normal 3 HMs, so marrying one shouldn't cause an extra to spawn I hope.

I've been told elsewhere that the environment score is "area-based" rather than averaged over the room.  DK any details though and I'd be interested to hear them.  I've never bothered trying to get the HM into a good bit though.  You can always move dirty plates outside with moveobjects on if you think they matter.

No, the extra will spawn --  the game likes to keep 3 of each of the service NPCs around. Same if you kill off a nanny, as many of us have done -- the game spawns replacements the next time you call for a nanny.

How are you calling the headmaster to the meal? Make sure you are not clicking on the platter to "call to meal" like you normally would, but click on a sim and "call to meal" that way when running the scenerio.

There are a couple of possibilities that I have encountered:

1) did you use maxmotives or some other cheat which may have affected his hunger level? He won't eat enough to give you points if he isn't hungry.
2) is he eating someone's leftovers? This has happened to me a couple of times; for some reason he will pick the mostly empty plate someone else has eaten from instead of a full one, and then he only gives 1 or 2 food points. Stupid HM.

Pescado pointed this out to me once and it pretty much is true as far as I can tell. The environment score is 'area based' as someone said rather than an overall room average. If you put objects that give a high environment score closer together, and you have the HM stand at a spot that maximizes proximity to all those objects, you will get a higher score for that room than if you have him stand anywhere else. I'm not sure exactly how the score is calculated, but I definitely got a much higher score when I had him stand in a corner that was surrounded by an expensive TV, bookcase, couch, and Light rather than if I had him stand at the entrance of the room further away from these objects.

I also had him stand in a bathroom with BUY installed, and he didn't get stuck in any use loop. But I suppose this was fairly early in the scenario, and maybe his bladder wasn't depleted enough. *shrugs*

Pescado also mentioned that it is better to have teens/children schmooze because the HM's interests tend to be 'juvenile' or something to that effect. I'm not sure if it is also mood based. When I was running several HM scenarios to test out my Enroll Legacy phone hack, I was using the Pleasant household as guinea pigs. I tried it often with Daniel or Mary-Sue schmoozing, and it seemed to be ok. But whenever their moods were just Green instead of Gold/Platinum, it appeared that the schmoozing failed. I can't say for sure whether it was actually mood/aspiration based or just more Maxian sadorandomness. But when I tried schmoozing with Angela or Lilith, it always seemed to go well. I didn't think to actually check the interests at that time though, so it might have been that their interests were high in school or work. I wonder if those interests get set randomly for Maxis pre-made families, like the Turn On/Offs, or if they are 'hard coded' from the start. Also curious, are the personality and zodiac signs for Maxis pre-mades 'hard-coded' or random?

Regardless, I rarely have that much of a problem with the HM scenario. I'd say maybe 9 times out of 10, it's pretty easy. I've only had it fail a few times when I was doing my tests, but that was mostly due to poor schmoozing, which apparently dropped points drastically, and a few times I decided to use different foods to see how it would affect it. I'm not completely sure that using the more expensive foods or foods that require higher skill necessarily racks up more points. It's been awhile, but I do remember passing the scenario with lunch meat sandwiches and even burnt hamburgers. :P

Ste

BUY does not act on NPCs like the headmaster, so if he gets stuck in the bathroom, it's not because of BUY.

That's not specifically what I said, i said that SOME headmasters are like this, and if your sim and/or the headmaster don't have a decent interest in the schmooze field, the interaction won't go too well. The "school" topic, however, tends to be more interesting to children than to adults, so many adults don't do well on this topic. It's largely based on interests.

I use the Syberspunk "legacy" mod. Once you get one kid into private school, you can just call up and register subsequent generations/siblings. No headmaster scenario required.