The Sims 4 High School Years: the complete guide to Copperdale, prom, and the InfluenSim career

Released in July 2022 but still popular four years later, the The Sims 4 High School Years expansion pack remains one of the richest additions to the game when you want to age up a Sim from the sandbox all the way to graduation day. In 2026, with the arrival of the Enchanted by Nature pack and the free updates that reworked outfits and emotions, Copperdale deserves a serious deep dive. This guide gives a complete tour of the world, the high school, prom, the two part-time careers (InfluenSim and video game streamer), the Business Savvy skill, and everything you need to know to succeed in a playthrough centered on adolescence, without sacrificing the family's pace of life.

Copperdale: a human-scale world, divided into three neighborhoods

Copperdale is a medium-sized, fairly rural world, wedged between a former mining area and a lake. The pack divides it into three official neighborhoods that structure your teens' entire lives, and it's worth getting to know each one before you place your house.

• Prescott Square: the historic heart of Copperdale, home to the Lakeside Library, the famous Trendi Tea thrift shop (both a bubble tea café and a secondhand store), and the Prescott family mansion, which gives the neighborhood its name. This is where residents, shopkeepers, and teens in need of inspiration after class all cross paths.
• Plumbquartz Cove: a former mining site turned into a recreational area on the shore of Lake LaSuli. Here you'll find the Plumbquartz Pier, Wobbly Park, a seasonal fairground, and several very cinematic spots such as Creekside Alley, the Hillside Hideaway, or the Little Falls Nest.
• Rockridge Heights: the institutional and residential part. This is where you'll find Copperdale High School, the auditorium that hosts prom, and the large upscale homes, including The Golden Peak and Water Tower Road.

In practice, it's often recommended to have a family with teens live in Rockridge Heights (close to the high school) while keeping a base in Plumbquartz Cove for weekends. Travel times don't really penalize your Sims, but the visual atmosphere shifts completely from one neighborhood to another.

A typical day at Copperdale High School

Unlike the Discover University pack, which sends students into a rabbit hole, High School Years makes school a playable place. Your teens take the school bus (or the shared car) right outside their home, and you follow the day in real time. Morning classes, locker stops between periods, the cafeteria at noon, tests to dodge or to cram for behind the principal's back: the routine is denser than it looks.

After class, you need to choose an extracurricular activity. The pack offers four:

• Football: physical training, matches, with progression leading to the role of captain.
• Cheerleading: choreography, gymnastics and charisma gains.
• Chess Club: logic skill, calm and scholarships for college.
• Computer Club: immediate boost to the programming and video gaming skills, useful if you're aiming for a streamer career.

Each activity earns school experience points, unlocks outfits, social interactions and above all a rank that influences recommendations at graduation. You can join several clubs at once, but managing homework, a part-time job and sport quickly becomes a real headache: energy and stress show no mercy.

Prom, the pack's iconic moment

Prom comes back every week (generally on Saturday night). A pop-up warns your teen a few days in advance, leaving time to prepare things properly. Three angles to work on:

1. Asking a date or promposal: your Sim can make a sign, prepare a choreography or a joke to ask out their crush. The proposal can succeed spectacularly, fall flat or turn into a public disaster — each reaction leaves a lasting feeling in relationships.
2. The outfit: spend some time in Create a Sim to put together a prom look. This is often where the Trendi thrift store and the Stylist app (more on that below) really pay off.
3. The evening itself: unlike other events in the game, prom is largely played out as a rabbit hole, with text-based choices that influence the night. Dancing, voting for prom royalty, sneaking off to flirt backstage or pulling a prank: each option changes the memories generated afterward.

Small tip: never miss the nomination for prom royalty. Being elected prom queen or king adds a positive moodlet lasting several days and unlocks a unique social interaction, very rewarding for a teen aiming for the Class Valedictorian aspiration.

The Stylist app and the InfluenSim career

The new feature that has most struck the community is the Stylist app, available from the phone of any adult or teen Sim. It's a fashion platform where you put together and sell outfits: top, bottom, shoes, accessories, free pricing. Other Sims place orders, and you cash in Simoleons with every sale.

Building on this, EA added a part-time career: InfluenSim. It's built around three very clear ranks:

• Nano-InfluenSim: first collaborations, small community, modest pay.
• Macro-InfluenSim: moderate recognition, more lucrative contracts.
• Mega-InfluenSim: celebrity status, sponsors, substantial income.

The schedules are designed not to clash with high school: two time slots to choose from, 5:30-7:30 AM or 9-11 PM, Monday through Saturday, with Wednesday and Sunday off. Skills to build up alongside it: Charisma (up to level 10) and especially the new Entrepreneurship skill (max level 5), which unlocks interactions like Promote Business, Develop Business Plan, or Convince Investor.

Practical tip: post your looks on Stylist Studio on Friday night and rotate two or three posts a day. The platform rewards consistency, and an influencer who churns out ten outfits at once will see their sales plateau if they then vanish for three weeks.

Video Game Streamer: The Other Teen Job

The second part-time career introduced by the pack: video game streamer. It's played from a computer (ideally the gaming PC released with the pack) and relies on the Video Gaming skill as well as Entrepreneurship. The concept is very true to real life: the more regularly you stream, the more followers you build up, and the higher your income climbs thanks to donations and product placements.

Compared to Social Media Star, streaming requires a bit more equipment investment (a good setup is expensive early in the game) but takes off faster if you stick to a disciplined routine of game review, live session, chat moderation. It's also the perfect path for a somewhat introverted teen with low charisma: video games make up for it.

The Entrepreneurship Skill: Leveling Up Fast and Well

This skill is the linchpin of both careers. It caps at level 5, but each tier unlocks powerful interactions:

Two quick ways to level up:

• Read Entrepreneurship books sold at the library or online. It's calm, safe, and boosts mood if the teen is Ambitious.
• Rack up posts on Stylist Studio and accept small Social Media Star contracts, even poorly paid ones. Every completed daily task grants XP.

If you play without cheats, expect three to four in-game days to reach level 5. With the stats.set_skill_level Skill_Entrepreneur 5 cheat (after testingcheats true), it's instant, but it deprives the teen of all the social gameplay that comes with leveling up.

Pranks, Stink Bombs, and Rivalries: Real High School Life

A kind, serious teen is nice. A teen who sets the cafeteria off with a stink bomb is more fun. The pack expands the Mischief skill (already present in the base game) with new high school-related interactions: locker pranks, gossip on the Stylist Studio app, quietly sabotaging a football game, flipping the script on a rival couple before prom.

The feelings system, inherited from the My Wedding Stories update, makes these choices really impactful. Wait, no — actually this refers to the Snowy Escape... Let me stay faithful to the source: it refers to the update mentioned. A teen who gets publicly humiliated at prom can develop a grudge against your hero for several weeks of gameplay, with blocked interactions and rumors that reach their parents. Conversely, reconciling two exes before graduation opens up a lovely chain of shared memories.

Customizing Copperdale High from the Gallery

The high school is a lot like any other: you can demolish it, replace it, upgrade it. The Gallery is packed with rebuilds of Copperdale High that fix the weak points of the base building: overly narrow hallways, tiny gym, poorly ventilated cafeteria. A simple #CopperdaleHigh filter brings up dozens of recent submissions.

Be careful to respect the lot type: the high school must remain marked as High School in Build Mode, otherwise classes will no longer trigger. Also remember to keep the objects tagged with the back-to-school function: principal's desk, lockers, scoreboard, coffee machines, otherwise your Sims will lose key interactions.

New CAS content and objects to remember

The pack brings a batch of additions to Create a Sim that are useful well beyond just teen roleplay:

• Body hair: legs, arms, torso, adjustable by density. This applies to all ages and all genders.
• Stretch marks and baby bumps for pregnancies (released alongside the free update).
• Nine pre-sorted clothing styles: Basic, Bohemian, Rustic, Hipster, Outdoorsy, Elegant, Preppy, Rock, and Streetwear — handy for putting together a cohesive wardrobe before listing it for sale on Stylo.
• New teen hairstyles, including several strand-based models and well-textured shaved cuts.

On the build side, notable additions include the fairground kiosk, the Plumbquartz pier pergola, cafeteria booths, segmentable lockers, and the shared car that decorates the entrance of a residential lot without needing to be driven.

Our tips for a successful "teen life" playthrough in 2026

1. Choose the aspiration first. Class Valedictorian and Entrepreneur are the two aspirations designed for this pack; they naturally guide tasks and prevent you from spreading yourself too thin.
2. Stick to one club at a time at first. School days are longer than you'd think; stacking two activities plus a part-time job exhausts the teen and tanks their grades.
3. Use Stylo even if you're not aiming for InfluenSim. Selling three outfits a week funds prom shopping and keeps you from draining the family account.
4. Plan for prom to take two to three days. Do the promposal as soon as the notification appears, prepare the outfit in advance, invite friends to get ready together: it's the perfect time to strengthen friendships.
5. Don't overlook graduation. A standout teen receives a significant career head start bonus and unlocks a Copperdale Alum trait that will follow the Sim into young adulthood.
6. Combine with another life pack. High School Years integrates remarkably well with Parenthood, My Wedding Stories, and Werewolves: teens can inherit a family fae, manage their moods, and go through a complicated back-to-school period all at once.

Our verdict four years after release

High School Years remains, along with City Living and Star Wars: Journey to Batuu—wait, no, with City Living and Til Death Do Us Part, one of the packs that give The Sims 4 the most emergent gameplay. The prom, Cliqués, and Extracurriculars mechanics mesh well with recent free updates, and Copperdale is still among the most used worlds by Gallery creators. If you only have one pack to add to your family save to finally make the teen life stage interesting, this is the one. And if you already have it but haven't gone back since 2023, go for it: the Enchanted by Nature pack and recent patches have breathed new life into its social interactions, especially around prom and long-lasting feelings.