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kevinkyoo, most top schools are ultimately less interested in how many years of language you've taken than in your level of proficiency, which is only vaguely correlated, unfortunately. If you go on to AP Spanish and do well, that's a sign that Spanish 4, however you took it, was good enough. If you take the Spanish subject test and do well, likewise. It the online course is not a well-known, standard one it might be good to demonstrate your ability with some such recognized exam or benchmark.
I've self-studied a number of languages to a reasonably high degree of proficiency--more than high enough to get exempted from what elite schools require of arts and sciences majors. Grammar, reading proficiency, etc. was not a problem, but my conversational ability lagged behind. I just wasn't all that good at processing spontaneous, unpredictable speech rapidly enough. This was in an era before online resources, so maybe that problem has been solved via interactive software--but if not, you might do well to seek out conversational opportunities with live humans.
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