And to take away from the spamming involved, have the spell cap off at certain levels, so that way you learn the spell in incriments. Much the way parry does for a warrior. Then you could up the learning rates so it would take less time to get to the next tier (thinking gates of the forge here).

And let me ask a question here. Do you see a problem with mages at 80 hours getting all their wand locations (with wand lists most likely) and beating a mage of the same guild who has been playing the character for 500 hours and doesn't have their wand locations? From an IC perspective, this makes absolutely no sense. From an OOC perspective, there can be many explanations. The number one explanation being player skill. A runner up being who the player is and who they know.