The Woodrow Wilson School is a multidisciplinary major in which each student, in consultation with the director, creates an individual program of study that combines techniques of analysis from the social science disciplines and courses that give the student substantive depth in a particular policy area.

Concentrators must take a minimum of eight departmental courses to graduate. A departmental course is one that can be used to meet a WWS requirement. All courses used to meet requirements must be graded. Except for courses used to meet the ethics and the methods requirements, all courses must also be 300-level or above and be designated or cross-listed as ECO, HIS, POL, PSY, SOC or WWS in the semester in which they were taken; courses recognized by other departments as cognates but not listed this way cannot be used to meet requirements. Upper-level courses taken during a semester abroad may, with approval, be used to meet the disciplinary, distribution or ethics requirement.

The WWS course requirements are as follows:

For Woodrow Wilson School concentrators, the task forces and policy research seminars fulfill the University's junior independent work requirement. The senior thesis constitutes the independent work of the senior year. The senior thesis is a scholarly paper related to the subject in public or international affairs that is of greatest interest to the student. Based on extensive research, it is the major project of the senior year.