Yes, unless you've been here so long that spell progression alongside character progression for your character is expected by members, Increases in skill must be applied for, and they have to make sense.
It's not going to get approved if you say "I met a master wizard", you have to be trained by a real character, unless he had the very rare intelligent skill of learning spells through scrolls, and even then, you have to have a scroll.
It sounds needlessly complicated, but the short answer is; it isn't, really. There used to be a no application required policy for this community, and it didn't work.