What are your classmates like?

What are your classmates like?

How are your classmates?

Is any difference in meaning between the sentences above?

What are your classmates like? Well, Kelly is beautiful, Jenny is thin, Steve is strange.....

How are your classmates?  Similar to "How are you?", "How is your daughter?" etc., possible answer may be e.g. They're all fine.

As a native speaker, I agree that the second asks about their welfare... but you can also use it the same way you use the first question.

How's your new job? How are the people you work with? How are your classmates?

All of these also mean "tell me about..." or "what are they like?" Perhaps it's a shortened version of "How do you find...?" which is an idiomatic way of saying "What do you think about...?"