Hi Jon,
May I ask you to clarify something please? It sounds like you are saying that there are many accessible top 25-50 schools in your area. But, then in your later posts it sounds like you were saying the schools accessible to him weren't very good. Top 25-50 schools are very good so that didn't really make sense. Do you have good schools he could commute to?
Sorry for the confusion. I didn't explain myself. We have an OK suburban state university within 30 min/10 min walk/bike distance from our home that my son could dual enroll at where there would be minimal to no cost to us. In addition, there are several second tier (top 25-50) schools about a 45 minute to 1 hour train ride into the city. In both cases, my son could get himself there on his own. The dual enrollment option would be very close to home but I don't think that he would get peers at his level of aptitude (and also there would be many fewer course offerings). The city schools offer everything (coursewise), but as a practical matter, he would really have to apply/enroll full time for both time and cost reasons and leave HS early. Even in the case of the second tier city schools, where his classmates would be far better than those in the local university, they would still be academically well below the elite selective schools. I know that Ivy admissions are not a sure thing, but by the time he is 18 (under any set of circumstances other than sitting out school for several years), he will likely have completed the equivalent of a math major and probably a physical or computer science major too. I find it hard to imagine that at age 18 there would be so much uncertainty over his acceptance to a top 10 school at that point.
We're trying to figure out what to do with him right now, and probably we'll try the nearby/free university first. If it's too easy, we'll go back to the drawing board.
