In this sentence:
We lost contact since we entered colleges.
Should "colleges" be in the plural form, since these two persons entered two different colleges?
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2 Answers
We lost contact since we entered colleges.
No, that is incorrect. A simple answer is that "colleges" should be changed to "college". However because they are different colleges it's perhaps still missing something.
Alternatives:
We lost contact after we (each/both) went away to college.
"went away" implies different colleges.
or
We lost contact after high school. I went to Harvard, and she to Yale.
That's clear.
In any case, "we entered" does have a connotation that "we" did something together, and so you are right about it being ambiguous.
I do not disagree with Sam's answer, but go to college in US English is frequently a description of a cultural rite of passage rather of a physical journey and thus treated as a fixed phrase. Use of the plural within that phrase is not idiomatic in the US. I agree that keeping college singular can sometimes leave an ambiguity about whether one college is meant or more than one college is meant. To indicate multiple colleges, you would not say go to colleges but rather say go to different colleges, which makes clear that you are not using go to college in its sense of a rite of passage.
