National Academic Quiz Tournaments


National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC is a question-writing and quiz bowl tournament-organizing company founded by former players in 1996. It is unique among U.S. quiz organizations for supplying questions and hosting championships at the middle school, high school, and college levels. NAQT operates out of Shawnee, Kansas and Minneapolis–Saint Paul.
The company mostly writes practice questions and questions for high school and middle school invitational tournaments, as well as for some game shows. Its involvement in college quiz bowl is mostly restricted to sectional tournaments and the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament.

At the college level

The ICT is divided into divisions, unlike ACF Nationals, so that a clear undergraduate champion is determined.

Collegiate divisions

Division I Overall

NAQT's eligibility rules state that any student taking at least three credit hours towards a degree at a university may compete on that university's team, and indeed may not compete independently if such a team exists. If no program exists at their university's campus, they may compete on the team for another campus of the same university, with the provision that they must leave that team should their home campus organize a program.
If any member of the team has an undergraduate degree, the team competes in the Division I competition, and is only eligible for the open championship.

Division I Undergraduate

At Sectional Championship Tournaments and the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament, teams that do not meet the Division II requirements play together. However, awards are given, including bids to the ICT, for the top undergraduate team. A team is eligible for the undergraduate championship if all members of the team are undergraduate students, and none of them have played in four years of NAQT collegiate competition prior to the current year. The undergraduate championship was first awarded in 1998.

Division II

Also introduced in 1998, Division II is intended to give first- and second-year students an opportunity to compete against other players and teams of the same level of experience. The rules of Division II eligibility are that one must be eligible for DI Undergraduate, and in no year prior qualified for or participated in ICT.
Exceptions to the eligibility rules have been granted to deal with special circumstances in past years; however, as they are controversial when they occur, they do not occur often.

Community colleges

Two-year colleges usually compete in separate SCTs each February. Eight teams qualify for the Division II ICT, where they compete alongside other DII teams in a manner analogous to that of DI Undergraduate teams. However, students at two-year colleges are exempt from the DII eligibility restrictions. In fact, they have three years of eligibility at the DII level.
2020 ICT
On March 11, 2020, NAQT announced that the 2020 ICT would be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Winners of NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament {{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/ict/past-winners.jsp|title=NAQT Past ICT Winners|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2019-08-30}}

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At the high school level

Teams qualify to the High School National Championship Tournament through a variety of methods. Most commonly, a team qualifies by finishing in the top 15% of the field at a tournament that uses NAQT questions. If a school wants to send more than one team to nationals, the school must qualify all said teams at the same time during a single tournament.
The small school award is given to a public school with a non-selective admissions policy and less than 500 students in grades 10 through 12. Up until and including 2013, the small school champion was decided on a playoff between top finishing teams at the High School National Championship Tournament. Since 2014, a separate national championship tournament has been held for small schools.
Since 2018, NAQT has also run the Individual Player National Championship. The IPNCT format is different from that of other NAQT national championship tournament, with players first competing in "group matches" which 8-10 players where they hear 48 or 72 ICT Division II tossups. After the group matches, top players compete in an elimination tournament whose games are 24-tossup head-to-head match-ups. Unlike the High School National Championship Tournament and Small School National Championship Tournament, competitors do not need to qualify to the Individual Player National Tournament.
On March 11, 2020, NAQT announced that the 2020 IPNCT would be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 2, 2020, NAQT announced that the 2020 HSNCT would be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Winners of NAQT High School National Championship Tournament {{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/hsnct/past-winners.jsp|title=NAQT Past HSNCT Winners|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2019-08-30}}

Winners of NAQT Individual Player National Championship Tournament, High School Division {{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/ipnct/2018/results/standings.jsp|title=NAQT 2018 IPNCT Results Overall Standings|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2020-01-28}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/ipnct/2019/results/|title=NAQT 2019 IPNCT Results Overall Standings|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2020-01-28}}

At the middle school level

For the 2010-2011 academic year, NAQT has introduced a program for middle school. A corresponding middle school national championship, called the MSNCT, was held in 2011 in Chicago. Similarly to HSNCT, qualifying teams for MSNCT have a variety of methods to qualify, but the most common method is to finish in the top 15% of field of teams that uses NAQT questions. If a school wants to qualify multiple teams, they must all qualify at the same tournament. Any teams that are eligible for MSNCT that qualify for HSNCT have also qualified for MSNCT.
The Individual Player National Championship Tournament has also had a middle school division since 2019. The format of the middle school division of the IPNCT is the same as that of the high school division, but the middle school division uses tossups written at the same difficulty of NAQT's Invitational Series for playoff rounds.
In 2019, NAQT started using question packets with a difficulty “similar to those in NAQT’s Regular Invitation Series sets,” for playoff rounds of MSNCT.
NAQT cancelled the 2020 MSNCT due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Winners of NAQT Middle School National Championship Tournament {{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/msnct/past-winners.jsp|title=NAQT Past MSNCT Winners|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2019-08-30}}

Winners of NAQT Individual Players National Championship, Middle School Division {{Cite web|url=https://www.naqt.com/ipnct/2019/results/#13150|title=NAQT 2019 IPNCT Results Overall Standings|website=www.naqt.com|access-date=2020-01-28}}

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Jeopardy!

Various NAQT employees and former NAQT players have appeared on the game show Jeopardy! Over 30 NAQT players or employees have participated on the show, including 17 who qualified for the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, including two finalists, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Jennings writes questions and edits the literature and mythology categories for NAQT. Due to the success of these players, adults trying out must now declare any affiliation to NAQT or quizbowl on their information sheet.
In 2006, competitors in the High School National Championship Tournament were given the opportunity to audition for the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament and the Jeopardy! College Championship. Ben Schenkel of Moravian Academy qualified for the Teen Tournament at this tryout, and finished as the tournament's first runner-up. Meryl Federman of Livingston High School qualified for the second edition of the teen tournament, called the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament Summer Games, and won.