Should I take online college courses?

Answered

I don't know how available this is in Brazil, but International Baccalaureate (IB) is generally considered an equivalent to APs. You can take those in place of APs. However, I'm not sure if most American universities (I'm assuming that you are planning to go to America to study because you mentioned APs which are typically in an American context) accept IB credits. Another option is to explore courses by Coursera or edX which I believe are much cheaper but are offered by top colleges. However, if your school doesn't offer APs, you don't have to worry about them too much since I saw it somewhere that said that admissions officers will compare the amount of APs you took compared to the number offered to you at your school. For example, admission officers are more pleased with a person that took 2 APs when their school only offers 4 APs than one that took 4 APs when their school offers 12. Also, another reason why you don't have to worry about APs as much is that colleges are beginning to look more at your extracurriculars and impact than academics, even though academics are still very important. As a result, you should try to do something unique that impacts your community rather than trying to take APs since your school doesn't offer them anyway.