The Salary Bracket: This Is One Harvard Wins The men's N.C.A.A. tournament bracket gets broken down by just about every criteria in the days before the tournament gets into full swing, so why not by alumni salaries? The folks at PayScale do this each year, with the unsurprising news that whenever Harvard is in the tournament, it wins. This year, the Crimson beat Cal in the national championship game, $92,200 to $89,600 by hitting a few big hedge funds in the final minute. PayScale, whose business is aggregating individual compensation profiles, says it uses its data from 36 million employee career profiles to compile the brackets. According to its data: Alumni from the 68 tournament schools average a salary of $68,800, up from an average of $67,500 in 2012. 1 seeds Gonzaga and Indiana are tied at $68,500, but Kansas and Louisville are not far behind in the $67,000 neighborhood. And they're all still looking up at Harvard. "Ivy League schools are not known for their sports prowess, but are known for their high earnings," said Katie Bardaro, lead economist at PayScale. It is no surprise that they continue to dominate the Salary Madness competition.