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 an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and a division per bar on rare occasions. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.

Along with Creighton University, the College of New Rochelle, and St. Mary’s College in Indiana (all Roman Catholic schools), the Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Mount Saint Mary’s College a hood lined “light blue above white” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. Mount St. Mary’s hood lining description was unchanged in subsequent lists from the Bureau, which did not define the heraldic division between the two colors. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) said that the light blue and white were divided per chevron.

Because the Intercollegiate Bureau descriptions of the hood linings of Creighton, New Rochelle, St. Mary’s College, and Mount St. Mary’s were identical, today the hood lining patterns of each school have been redesigned to make them distinctive. The college seal of Mount St. Mary’s University is heraldically divided per cross, so colors in the hood lining for the university have been likewise divided per cross.