Which March Madness team is the smartest? Ranking the schools and athletes on academics

As March Madness kicks off, 68 teams have an opportunity to win college basketball glory. While athletic skills and coaching will decide which team wins the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship, it's far from the only way to stack the schools up.

When it comes to academics, different schools top the rankings.

U.S. News and World Report, one of the premiere academic ranking outlets, has Princeton at the top of its list. Duke, Northwestern and Notre Dame also claim high spots on the national university rankings. Schools including Providence and Gonzaga rank well among their respective regions

Click through to see the academic rankings of March Madness schools:

But when it comes to student athletes, the NCAA uses two metrics to measure performance in the classroom: the Graduation success rate (GSR), the and Academic Progress Rate (APR).

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The GSR metric provided by NCAA differs from the federal measure of graduation, allowing schools to include student who transferred into the institution, in addition to those who withdrew with eligibility for graduation. The APR, calculated out of 1,000, is designed to predict the institution's ultimate graduation rates by measuring student athletes' grades and retention.

The Obama administration suggested in 2010 that teams should be barred from participating in March Madness if they failed to graduate at least 40 percent of their players. While the idea didn't become policy, if it had, University of Arizona and University of Connecticut would have benched that season.

Take a look below to see how all March Madness teams ranked from first to worst in grades and graduation rates among their student athletes: