<p>Our kids each did a mix – one or more visits with us, visits alone, with friends and no parents, with friends and us (or one of us), and with a friend and the friend’s parent(s). I didn’t think any of the friends posed a problem for my kid, or vice versa. Partially that was personality: My older child is very analytic, and not much prone to peer pressure, and her friends with whom she visited were more or less the same way. They tended to come out with similar views of colleges they visited, but they had very nuanced similar views, and they didn’t necessarily make the same decision about applying. My younger child likes everything; his grading system is sort of Colossal, Super Jumbo, Jumbo . . . . (Well, he didn’t like isolated rural LACs, but we knew that going in.)</p>
<p>Towards the end of high school, my son actually took his 11th grade girlfriend to see some local colleges (not any he was considering). That was straightforward influence: She was going to be the first person in her family to go to college (and her family included several older siblings), and really didn’t have anyone at home to give her solid advice; he was comfortable with the college search process and had a pretty good sense of what she liked and didn’t like. It worked – she wound up going to a college he introduced her to (and the relationship was over long before that happened).</p>