The 2021 NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament was hosted online by NAQT via the Zoom platform. Columbia University won their first-ever DI ICT title by securing the second game of a finals series against Illinois A. Stanford A placed third.
Brown won the Division I Undergraduate title over Princeton while, in Division II, Vanderbilt defeated Minnesota B to take the title.
The tournament, continuing NAQT's sponsorship agreement with LetterOne, used essentially the same format as in 2018 and 2019, but with four fewer teams and no tiebreaker games; due to the longer times involved in online quizbowl, all ties for moving from one phase of the tournament to another were broken by PPG.
Unlike previous ICTs dating to at least 1998, this tournament did not require qualification and no SCT was held in 2021. After initially giving eight selected teams the opportunity to register, the fields were opened on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Trivia
- With their first-ever top 4 finish in DI, Texas became the 21st all-time school to finish in the Top 4 at the DI ICT as well as the only school from the state of Texas and only member of the Big 12 Conference to ever do so.
- Columbia won their ICT title in 2021 with a completely distinct roster from the team that won ACF Nationals in 2019 just two years earlier, duplicating a feat of Chicago's 1997 ICT and 1999 ACF Nationals teams.
- Auroni Gupta became the second player to lead the DI ICT in scoring for two different schools and the fifth to win multiple DI ICT scoring titles overall, as well as the third player, after Matt Weiner and Chris Ray, to be named a DI ICT all-star for three different schools.
- All of the top 3 finishers in Division II were making their first all-time appearance in the top 4. Vanderbilt won its first quizbowl national title of any kind, becoming the 13th school all-time to win DII ICT and the first SEC school to do so.
- British Columbia became the third Canadian and third non-U.S. team to reach the top 4 in Division II, and the first team from the greater Pacific Northwest circuit to reach the top 4 of any collegiate national tournament.