Don't think that Harvard University's entry into the 2012 National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament makes this year's bracket winner a lock.
For the Academic Performance Tournament bracket, we mean, in which Inside Higher Ed -- for the seventh consecutive year -- determines the tournament winner based on each team's scores in the classroom rather than on the court. And Harvard -- which for many might be the dictionary definition of academic performance, and gave the world Jeremy Lin -- isn't the only surprise. In our academic bracket, winners are determined based on each team's multi-year Academic Progress Rate, which the NCAA uses to measure classroom performance. In the event of a tie, we turn to the NCAA's Graduation Success Rate, which measures the proportion of athletes who graduate within six years. Last year, Butler University took the title.
