Although the correct colors of the Edward Waters College were purple and orange, academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927 and 1948 described the college as having a hood lined purple with a burnt orange chevron. The IBAC may have assigned Edward Waters a burnt orange chevron to avoid duplicating the hood already assigned to the Blumer College of Naturopathy in Connecticut (purple with an orange chevron). This college closed in 1923 or 1924 so the IBAC reassigned that hood lining pattern to Dallas Theological Seminary.

The Bureau apparently attempted to correct the colors in the hood lining for Edward Waters in the late 1940s or 1950s by reassigning the college a hood lined purple with a reversed orange (not burnt orange) chevron – the chevron was inverted to avoid duplicating the hood of Dallas Theological Seminary.

Unfortunately this information was not accurately transcribed into a 1972 IBAC list, which stated the hood lining of Edward Waters College was purple with a reversed burnt orange chevron. A more accurate citation had been compiled by Kevin Sheard for Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), which described the hood lining of the college correctly: purple with a reversed orange chevron.