[R] simple if statement

[Brian Quinif]

I am ashamed to be asking this question, but I couldn't find the
solution anywhere.  Searching for "if" and "R" is not very
productive...

I cannot get a simple if statement to work.

I have data on college students.  I want to make a string variable
that has the names of the years.  That is, when the year variable i is
equal to 1, I want to have a variable called years equal to
"Freshmen".

I tried this
years <- "Freshmen" if i==1
years <- "Sophomores" if i==2

and so on, but I couldn't get it to work.  How can I get this variable to work?

Thanks,

BQ