My youngest child started high school this year, so I get to go through the entire college admissions cycle again with her. There’s not a whole lot that 9th graders need to be doing for college—they should focus on being good high school students. But two things came up this week that had me giving her some quick advice, and I’ll share it here.

Yesterday her high school hosted a small college fair, with 11 colleges. I told my daughter about the three questions I ask colleges:

What’s a course, tradition, program or event that is unique to your college? It’s really common for them to talk about some special tradition welcoming new students or graduating students, but you can hear all kinds of fun things when you ask this question.

All colleges like perfect students, but what kind of imperfect students does your college especially like? “ooh, that’s a good question,” she said. Getting that kind of praise from a 14-year-old? It felt good.

When people come to visit your school, what’s something off campus you recommend they check out? Almost all answers tend to be “our town square has a good coffee shop and an art gallery,” “there’s some good nature nearby for light hiking,” or “we’re in a big city with lots of big-city stuff.” But sometimes you get something different, and it can start a conversation about how the school relates to the larger community around it.

(Did my daughter ask any of the schools any of those questions? I don’t think so, but a dad can only hope for so much.)

And today she’s taking the PSAT. Her school gives it to all 9th-11th grade students. I told her that it’s very important that when the initial information section asks if you want to be part of the Student Search Service, she say yes. This is the primary way colleges find students for outreach and recruitment.

With that in mind, I told her to get a box to keep college brochures that come in the mail, and to make an email folder for college brochures that come through email. There’s no need to spend much time looking at mail she’s not interested in, but now is not the time to throw anything away. When she does start getting interested in colleges a few years from now, she can search her own archives to see what they’ve sent her.

This week may have been the only time we talk about college stuff this year, at least until late in the spring. So I’m glad we got these small opportunities.

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