About 19 million people submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) each year, making it one of the most commonly experienced federal administrative processes. The widespread reliance on the complicated form and underlying calculation of financial need have spurred efforts to simplify and improve the application process and associated aid formula, called the Federal Methodology (FM), which uses the data provided to assess a family's Expected Family Contribution (EFC) to college costs. Moving to a higher education system that finances public education upfront and makes tuition free would alleviate some of the reliance on means testing and thus on the FAFSA process. But most state free tuition college programs still rely on the FAFSA, and federal proposals that provide means-tested non-tuition aid through the Federal Pell Grant similarly assume the continued use of the form. Federal free college efforts in particular, then, should trigger a rethink and significant overhaul of the process to receive non-tuition aid to ensure that low-income students are adequately served by the new system. If all goes well under a free college system, more low-income students will enroll in schools that may have otherwise been financially out of reach, making the reliance on the FAFSA critically important. This means significant measures to fix the process are necessary.