The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in a college or university’s hood, but by 1918 Leonard was also using was what he called a “wide chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the wide chevron hood lining used a chevron with a width of 4½ inches, five inches, six inches, or more. The IBAC did not assign a wide chevron very often, as it tended to hide the color above the chevron when the hood was folded and worn, which gave the lining the appearance of being divided per chevron. Here this pattern has been substituted by a triple chevron whenever possible.

Garrett Biblical Institute is first cited in a 1948 IBAC list as having a purple hood lining with a white chevron. This was a duplication of the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned Amherst College in 1895 or 1896. Avoiding this problem, in the late 1940s or 1950s the IBAC assigned Evangelical Theological Seminary a purple hood lining with a “4 inch wide” white chevron, according to Academic Heraldry in America (1962) by Kevin Sheard.

After 1974 the merged institution used a purple hood lining with a white chevron. So to distinguish the hood of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary from the hood of Amherst College, the seminary’s lining design has been revised to create a pattern unique to the seminary. Now purple with three white chevrons, the chevrons can symbolize both the Trinity and the three institutions that joined over the years to create what is now Garrett-Evangelical: Garrett Biblical Institute, the Chicago Training School, and Evangelical Theological Seminary.