What do LessWrongers think of terror management theory? It has it's roots in Freudian psychoanalysis, but it seems to be getting more and more evidence supporting it (here's a 2010 literature review)

How did this end up going? Any chance of us getting an update?

My parents were similarly irrational.

I think you could still take the GED and apply to colleges right now. I think it sometimes can help to discuss things concretely "I have my GED and have been accepted to XYZ Uni to study ABC" v. "I could get my GED and apply to colleges.".

If you can't graduate 2 years early with a GED, you could try graduating 1 year early by just earning all the necessary credits. My school offered credits for passing AP exams, and I just self-studied for several of them and passed them.

Biases/my history: I went to a good public high school after indifferent public elementary and junior high schools. I attended an Ivy League college. My life would have been different if I had gone to academically challenging schools as a youth. I don't know if it would have been better or worse; things have worked out pretty well.

You come off as very smart and self-aware. Still, I think you underrate the risk of ending up as an other-person at the public high school; friends may not be as easy as you expect. Retreating to a public high school may also require explanation to college recruiters.

I also think your conclusion that you would study better with more friends may be a self-persuading effort that there are scholastic reasons to switch. But there don't have to be scholastic reasons: Being unhappy for two more years in your teens is a big deal, and if you are satisfied that your happiness will increase substantially by switching, you should switch. Long view is nice, but part of that view should be that two years of a low-friend existence sounds no fun, and the losses of switching are likely to be minimal.

Finally, commuting is a life-killer. Adults very commonly underrate the loss of quality of life for commuting (I commute 10 minutes each way; I have had jobs with one-hour commutes.) I'd suggest it's even more valuable time lost for a teenager.

Finally finally, I'm confident you'll get this right for you. Take a look at these responses, talk it out, then rock on. Be good, stay well.

If I could re-do high school, I would get my GED as early as possible, and then do something useful with my time instead of gong to high school. For example, you could self-study a bunch of APs exams, test out of all the general education requirements at many universities, and then graduate from college early too.

Then, when you get to college, you can spend a bunch of your time socializing, on campus.

This means that 1. I get home from school around 6pm and 2. (more importantly) it's very hard to socialize when you don't board at the school, and there's really very little besides drama or sports (neither of which I like very much) that people do after school and actually enjoy/make friends in.

Sports or physical fitness in general is an important activity to stay healthy. A lot of the processing power of our brain goes to coordinating the body. If you have better balance less of your processing power needs to go towards coordinating your body, even if you sit in a math test.

it's very hard to socialize when you don't board at the school

Are you saying that you don't have good friendships with other students at the moment?

My impression is that later in life many people remain in touch with their friends from university and rather few with their friends from high school. If I'm right about this, the social advantages of the public school are shortish-term only. (That doesn't make them unimportant.)

Does that hold true now that we have magical facebook?

What are your university plans? The more interested you are in going to a highly selective university or studying something very challenging there, the more valuable the academic strength of your current school.

Do you think the "outstanding" academics at your current school mean that you would actually learn more there than at the public school, or only that you would be better credentialled or something of the kind?

My impression is that later in life many people remain in touch with their friends from university and rather few with their friends from high school. If I'm right about this, the social advantages of the public school are shortish-term only. (That doesn't make them unimportant.)

Do you have a strong sense of how friendly the other people at the public school would be to someone newly arrived from a fancy independent school? That seems like something that could be a source of tension (e.g., they may expect you to think you're better than they are, somehow, which can cause trouble even if you have no such attitude).

Is there anyone else who has a say in where you go? (Parents, legal guardians, ...) If so, what do they think, and what do you think about what they think?

When thinking that the local public school is otherwise equivalent to your boarding school, you should consider two things in addition to the things that others have noted:

1. What's the base rate? Generally, private schools are better than public schools. Otherwise, people would not pay for private schools. Anecdotally, I am always appalled by the things I hear about public schools (since my kids went to private school). I'm also appalled by my own memories of public schools. The qualitative difference is usually pretty big.

2. Public schools' reputations are usually overblown compared to private schools. Generally, you get into a public school by where you live. The reputation of the local public school thus affects property values, giving all the locals a strong incentive to claim that their school is good. Additionally, they feel more comfortable assuring themselves that the school that they are sending their kids to for free is a good school. That is, their conclusions that their schools are good is motivated reasoning. The result is that 75% of people believe that their kids' public school is above average, which is just impossible.

I have several recommendations.

First things first, I strongly recommend reading this blog post by Siderea on the possible values of attending University. The difference between a public and private high school for you may very well be similar to the difference between a lower and higher status university. This article will expand your list of possible benefits and detriments to the two (and more) options. Spending lots of time around higher status and higher income people has a lot of benefits that aren't immediately obvious. (I'm assuming the private school is higher status here. I don't know your area and there are certainly low status private schools out there.)

I recommend adding these ideas to your considerations, reading what ScottL describes below, and then doing Goal Factoring on the entire question. Goal Factoring is a very useful CFAR technique that works well in this exact type of situation. I don't see a great write-up for it online and I'm not sure how great that link is at describing it. However, if you'd like to hear a more thorough explanation and practice the technique after you've looked into this stuff you're welcome to PM me your skype username and we can chat about it sometime soon. (I'm decent at debugging, but if you get any other offers you should definitely take those up as well as or instead of mine.)

And I also recommend going and meeting some people who actually attend the public high school or just taking a day off and wandering into the place to see what it's actually like in person. You may be slightly dissatisfied at your current location but would absolutely hate the public high school. (Bullying isn't a myth, the grass is always greener on the other side, etc.) The year you're in will also have a lot of consequences in what your experience is like since many friendships are already formed and group boundaries defined by the end of the 2nd year (if not the 1st).

Last but not least, if you don't already have a clear answer and want a hundred other things to consider (or you've decided on an answer and are ready for your next challenge) you should take a look at the Starting University Advice Repository thread. One of the primary values of High School is preparing you for and enabling your progression in University. This includes socially (for relationships), academically (for knowledge), building study habits, developing your writing, developing interpersonal skills, acquiring culture (acculturating), making use of the high school's prestige, and more (as described in Siderea's post linked above).