Having honed the habit of achievement in the race to get into college, students are increasingly pursuing double, triple and even quadruple majors when they get there, amassing credentials they hope will show their diligence and perhaps give them an edge getting into graduate schools or landing jobs in a difficult market.

Katherine Lochbrunner is one of the superachievers, graduating from Boston University last spring with a quadruple major - in Hispanic language and literature, art history, Latin and classical civilization.

"I just couldn't narrow it down to one field," said Lochbrunner, who teaches Latin at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City, N.J. "I thought I'd do Spanish, but then I discovered how much I liked art history. And I thought four majors would be good at the point when I was looking for a job."

At Georgetown University, 23 percent of the 2002 graduates had double majors, compared with 14 percent of the class of 1996. At Washington University in St. Louis, 42 percent of last year's arts and science graduates had double majors or double degrees, compared with 28 percent of the 1997 graduates.

Nearly a quarter of the students in the University of Wisconsin, Madison's graduating class have double majors. But that no longer counts for a lot: About 160 students are getting triple majors or more, and even quintuple majors are not unheard of.

For the growing number of students who spent their high school years pursuing Advanced Placement credits, high test scores and prestigious extracurricular activities, the multiple major seems to be the Next Big Thing. The faltering economy, with its dim job prospects for new graduates, plays a role, too.

Administrators at some schools say they worry that meeting all the departmental requirements stops multiple majors from sampling a broad liberal arts education and taking time to explore new passions. Some college officials express doubts that double majors confer any real benefit in graduate school admissions or the job market. Some advise students to use extra credits to graduate early and get a master's degree, rather than taking five years to complete three or four undergraduate majors, as many want to do.