A three-course concentration may be substituted for the policy research project in the second year.
Most elective courses are seminars.
The core curriculum of the LBJ School is designed to provide students with a basic set of skills and understanding required for effective professional performance in government. Students are expected to demonstrate competence in the core curriculum before they can begin the required internship. In practice this means that a student must have completed five of the six first-year core courses before the beginning of the internship and that if a core course requirement has not been fulfilled, the internship may not be in an area that requires competence in the unfulfilled area. The regular program consists of fifty-three hours of graduate credit. The Model Curriculum Plan shows the sequence in which courses are ordinarily taken.