My impression was that the Academic Trial was very much an AU thing, because this Spock has pride issues. He designed the test, and he designed it for a certain reason, and nobody's gonna get around that, no way no how. Also, his Human/Vulcan emotional issues are much less settled, and he really hasn't learned the value of human cheating yet.

Which, I suppose does feed into the likelyhood of him going off the deep end and having a clandestine affair with a cadet? This Spock is much more screwed up than Original Spock.