@ChangeTheGame, first, I want to applaud you and your wife for the work, sacrifices and foresight that led to the great outcomes. You have my admiration.
Our background is different as I am Jewish and white. My grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe with nothing and no college degrees but on both sides of the family pushed very hard for education achievement. One one side of the family, a physicist (my dad) and a mathematician who later became a lawyer. On the other side, a lawyer, a PhD in Romance languages (my mom), and a geologist (BS only, who worked for the government). My father grew up in the Depression and generally pretty poor and that experience affected his decision-making for his whole life, although he never once talked about it or complained. We were fortunate to grow up middle class – we lived in one town because the more affluent town my mother wanted to live in was governed by one of the gentlemen’s agreements – the real estate brokers didn’t sell houses in that town to Jews. My dad later bought a house there from a developer who wasn’t using an agent, We were at the tail end of anti-semitism in the US (until the Trump era resurgence) but in elementary school (in the first town), kids wanted to fight me because I was Jewish and I was one of 4 Jews in my HS class of 400 in the second town. I went to an Ivy that reeked of WASP aristocracy but the only discrimination I ever experienced there was from the mother of a GF whose family had come over on the Mayflower. The daughter was an Nth generation legacy and was a gem – great spirit all the way around.
My background is probably also different because I attended three very elite schools and taught at one in the beginning of my career and am probably in the bottom of the top 1%.
That said, I have two kids that I have guided through the college maze and post-college maze. Both had LDs and serious medical issues. One kid is severely dyslexic, extremely bright, and has had two major surgeries for a condition that often made him tired. The other was/is ADHD, is very bright, and was (incorrectly) diagnosed with a degenerative disease that would have led to near blindness – it took years to solve the problem. My wife did dial down her career when the kids were of school age.
Both kids have had great outcomes in life (thus far) and people have attributed some of the success to the ways I helped each one navigate. If I might, let me add a couple of things to your list.
First, my goal was not to help them get in to the most prestigious college but to help prepare them for fulfilling, successful adult lives. Prestige matters for some kids and not others, though my observation is that the signalling value of prestige makes more of a difference for URMs. But, the goal was to help prepare them to spend their lives in fulfilling ways, in jobs that they loved (maybe not at first but as they progressed) and that treated them well (however they defined being treated well). For some kids, prestige would be important. For others not. I hoped also for them to find partners who would support, complement and love them, but I’m not sure that I have any direct competence to teach that (though I hope that our marriage has served as an imperfect but decent model for them).
Second, college admissions is about showing no weaknesses (otherwise the adcom can find another kid who is arguably similar without that weakness) and probably exhibiting one key strength. In my son’s case, showing no weakness was going to be impossible (he couldn’t do foreign languages at all) but his strengths were so prodigious that I decided to admit the weaknesses (he just didn’t take foreign languages) and focused on making sure his reading and writing were closer to his intellectual capacity and simultaneously making sure he could play to his strengths so he retained his self-confidence. In contrast, grad school admissions and job searches involve playing to one’s strengths. My daughter transferred after one semester of her freshman year to a program that played to her strengths – her idea – and it has worked out wonderfully.
Third, regarding point 4, I had to advocate for them like crazy – especially for my son. It started in grade 2 for my son – who took in and produced written information very slowly and needed extra time as well as help in learning to read. We had the same issue with gifted or enrichment programs because he was slow at doing tasks. Later, it took a full year of advocating to get my son double time on the SATs spread out over two days, but I did it. But, I used that to teach them how to advocated for themselves. I discussed with them what I was doing, how I was doing it, and encouraged them to help. Advocating for themselves meant shaping the path to fit their strengths and not just pushing up against their weaknesses. The neuropsychologist who tested my son told me when he was a senior that he had never tested a kid who was so confident that he could make the system change to work for him and thus could play to his strengths.
Fourth, regarding point 5, learning to struggle and also to fail and pick yourself up again is a very good lesson – best to be learned before HS. My wife actually told my son it would be OK to fail middle school Latin, but he refused to do so. By HS, it may be important to manage the record .
Fifth, regarding point 3, we set expectations that each kid was going to put in the work. Given our affluent town and their parents’ backgrounds, our kids knew they would go to college. But, my expectation was that they would put in every bit of effort needed. They would do their best in anything that mattered. I have an extraordinary colleague who was attending grad school in another department from me. He was very, very bright (has tenure at one of the best universities in the world where I started my career). He would methodically prepare for tests and work backwards from the deadline to figure out what to do when. When it came time to prepare for his general exams, he laid out a several week program of preparation. One of his classmates (who was my GF at the time) asked him “You do so well on exams. Why do you need to spend so much time preparing?” He said, “I think you have the causation backwards. I do so well because I prepare so intensely.” I shared that (repeatedly) with my kids and I could see them adopting it over time.
Finally, we didn’t do the classes on college prep or elevator pitches. I think I naturally gave a lot of that to my kids. But, I do see that one needs even more than that. My son went to a very highly ranked LAC. A number of his college friends came from economically underprivileged backgrounds. Many were URMs, though not all URMs are lower SES (one of his college roommates who came to our house on NYE is an African American son of a leading physician and a foundation CFO). My son has observed that the lower SES folks got no advice or bad advice on careers and on financial decisions. (E.g., don’t use a credit card to finance a higher rent than you can afford on a teacher’s salary.) They didn’t learn about or get help getting internships. Some majored in fields like English or Psychology or African American Studies that would require more work to get jobs but didn’t get guidance on how to do that. I would really like to see the school proactively help – if the school is really pushing to admit lower SES and URM kids, which it explicitly says it is, the school should proactively help prepare them for next steps. But, they won’t or don’t know how to. While your kids are not lower SES, it will fall upon you @ChangeTheGame and your village to do so for your kids. And, I’m sure you are up to the task.