<p>To answer your original question, if you don’t receive a letter from any given college by the posted notification date, you can call them on the next business day, tell them your letter was “lost in the mail”, and ask for your decision online.</p>
<p>If you need financial aid, you should have at least started the financial aid process by now–many universities’ deadlines have already passed or are coming up this Friday. You need parental cooperation to file financial aid forms, and you have to designate the colleges you applied to on the FAFSA and Profile. So did your mom cooperate about sending them in? If so, the only part she has to agree to is done. You can accept any offer you get. She has no power to stop you whatsoever–except for paying for college. She can refuse to pay. But if the amount is small enough, you can take out federal loans without a co-signer, so if you get a really generous offer you can take it.</p>
<p>When I’m persuading my mom to let me do something, I always enlist the help of her friends and siblings. Never fails.</p>