How do I help students who face long odds and no support?

You can advise most students well now. The ones who defeat you are the ones with no support at home and the odds stacked against them, the ones for whom your usual guidance is not enough. That they weigh on you means you see them clearly. It also means you are carrying an expectation no advisor can actually meet. Here is the thing you have to make peace with: you did not build the odds these students face, and you cannot single-handedly undo them. What you can do is be one steady, honest adult in a system that gave them too few. That is smaller than fixing everything, and it is not nothing. For some of them it is the thing they remember. With these students, aim for one real connection over a perfect plan. Help them find one door, one person, one next step they can actually take. And find support for yourself too, because carrying their odds alone will burn you out. You are not failing them by being human-sized. You are one good thing in a hard road, and that counts.