A number of my students at The Hill School have been asking how my regalia is different this year now that I have a doctorate degree.  There's a lot of information — and misinformation — out there about academic regalia, so I thought that I'd write this up as a quick post.  This is by no means intended to be an authoritative guide: there are entire academic costume codes that do that.  Rather, this is intended to give the reader a quick-and-dirty primer on academic regalia prior to, say, attending a graduation ceremony.

Doctoral Robes

I'm going to, oddly, start at the top and work my way down rather than the other way around.  Why?  Well, the doctoral robes are traditionally the most complex, so it makes it easier.  As a general rule, the robes get simpler as you move down to bachelor, so I can mostly talk about what's been removed.  So, to get started, here's a wonderful image that I took at The Hill School graduation with the inimitable Dr. Kathy Malone, The Hill's Elizabeth B. Blossom Chair of Humanities:

There are a couple of easy ways to tell that a member of the procession has a doctoral degree.  First, they most often wear a tam, a "poofy" hat that a lot of people think looks like a beret.  (The tam, though, typically has either 4, 6, or 8 sides to it.)  Second, they will have three velvet "stripes" on the sleeves.  The velvet stripes tend to be your best bet for picking out someone with a doctorate, as you do sometimes see someone in doctoral regalia wearing a mortarboard style hat.

The robes themselves are most traditionally black.  In fact, the aforementioned academic costume code actually specifies that.  However, the Ivy League colleges — in particular Yale and Harvard — decided to start making robes in their school colors.  Nowadays, it's pretty common for doctoral robes to be more colorful.  Since Dr. Malone and I both hold a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, you'll note that our robes are Penn's red and blue colors.

One of the interesting things about seeing the two of us next to each other is that you can see how the academic regalia differs depending on the type of doctorate.  Dr. Malone holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.) in history.  All Ph. D. holders — regardless of their discipline — wear a dark blue associated with philosophy.  (A bit of minutia: the dark blue does not represent philosophy as a discipline in this case but rather a love for learning.)  I hold a Doctor of Education (Ed. D.).  As a result, I wear a light blue color to signify the field of education.  In the photo, you can see us both wearing our hoods.  On the part of the hood immediately in front of our necks, you can see the dark blue for the Ph. D. on Dr. Malone, and you can see the light blue for the Ed. D. on me.  Here is a chart of the various colors.

Note, also, that the University of Pennsylvania carries through this color onto the doctoral stripes on the sleeve as well.  These stripes are most commonly black.

Master's Robes

Master's robes differ from doctoral robes in that they are almost always black.  The hood worn around the neck and down the back will be shorter than the doctoral hood, though it is otherwise more-or-less the same.  Just like the doctoral hood, the color in front of the neck will signify the discipline, and the color for the discipline will gradually turn under on the person's back to reveal the school's colors.

The sleeves are a dead giveaway for a master's robe: they have a squarish piece on them that hangs below the wrist.  If you see long, dangly pieces on the sleeves of an academic robe, it most likely signals a master degree.

Hats are most often a mortarboard.

Bachelor Robes

Bachelor robes are the most basic of the three, and there's also a great deal of variation.  Again, the default color is black, but many institutions will choose to use a single-color robe.  So, if a school's colors are green and white, graduates might wear a green robe.  The hood is also optional, and many institutions do not have graduates wear them at graduation.  If worn, though, they are even shorter than those on the master's robe, and the portion in front of the neck still signifies the discipline.

Hats are almost always a mortarboard.