Online school may not work well for a student that is not self motivated and for classes he is not interested in. You may well be setting up a conflict between your son and whoever is overseeing his school work. Unless the courses are very regimented, I have seen kids have a hard time getting motivated because they don’t have to be in class at a certain time or do assignments or take tests according to the teacher’s schedule.
Homeschool or online school will NOT make him likely to get into a top college, as it sounds like your local HS is good and send kids to top colleges. If online school is what he needs to succeed, that is on thing. But if you are thinking it will make a better college application, you may want to think again.
Again, it depends on the student, the parents, and the school. Putting the parent-child relationship in jeopardy over a possible Ivy acceptance is not a good idea. A parent can still have some control over a child’s academic habits in public school.
Especially since the odds of getting in to an Ivy/equivalent are so low anyway.
Because the US is a big country and the Ivies/equivalents have relatively small undergraduate student bodies, all of them added together have enough slots for less than 1% of the HS grads in the US.
Then when you factor in that roughly half the slots (or more) would go to hooked candidates, then there are enough slots for less than half of 1% of the HS grads in the US (a little over half of those slots at Ivies, others at equivalents).
Which means the unhooked kids that get in pretty much have to be within the top couple percentiles in both test scores and class rank as well as be pretty spectacular in other ways as well.
I have a homeschooled/dual enrolled senior(and freshman for that matter). I think this is a personality thing. My kid chose to homeschool/dual enroll his last 2 years for flexibility. He does have heavy extracurricular load and is often working on that 30-40 hours a week. He takes 3 music lessons a week, does a regional music group that meets 3 hours a week and performs, regularly does regional, youth, and community theater with shows that run as long as 6 weeks, does other one off performing for fundraisers, has done recording work for pay, etc. He is kind of an old soul and just didn’t have time for the social drama and extra hoop jumping expected at many high schools. We gave him plenty of options when it was time to go to high school. He is self motivated. If you do school at home, really dig in to see what kind of options are available for volunteering, extracurriculars of interest, leadership, etc(homeschooled kids can do public school activities here, etc). I think wanting to embrace opportunities outside the norm with a self motivated teen is a good reason to chose it. If he were wishy washy on it, he’d go to school at my house.
Anyway - I’d choose the high school option that works best for your kid and worry about college possibilities when you get closer. There are no guarantees with any path for elite schools with college admissions and I certainly wouldn’t get excited about that for an 8th grader. My 99% ACT, 4.0 dual enrolled kid graduating with 32 college credits and deep extracurriculars, great recs, etc. is going to a state flagship honors program (also got music admissions via audition/generous scholarship) and is very happy about it. Anyway - he did get into some competitive schools, but the flagship was the right price and fit. I don’t feel like his method of schooling was an advantage or disadvantage. If it were an advantage it would probably be because you bring some other diversity to campus. Like I know some homeschool high achievers who’ve done well in admissions from interesting geographic locations (think rural Idaho).
To build on post #22, about half or more of the slots at Ivies/equivalents are filled in ED or SCEA.
Which means that if you are an average excellent kid, unless you are spectacular in some way(s) (or near perfect academically and really strong in many areas), you almost have no shot in RD.