Do Ivy League universities have to admit anyone if they don't want to?
Do students even have only one choice of public discounted universities?
The experience seems pretty distinct.
You are implying racism just as the article.
"Moscow had many schools, but there was only one place to study pure math: Moscow State University, known by its Russian abbreviation MGU, Moskovskiy Gosudarstvenny Universitet. Its famous Mekh-Mat, the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, was the flagship mathematics program of the USSR. Since I wanted to study pure math, I had no choice but to apply there."
Or if you meant you'd never heard about anti-Jewish discrimination in the admissions process at Harvard and other places, you should read http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...