I haven't yet shown this to my mom (native russian, emigrated in early 1980s) But she told me that she basically had to blackmail the head doctors of the Moscow

I haven't yet shown this to my mom (native russian, emigrated in early 1980s) But she told me that she basically had to blackmail the head doctors of the Moscow Medical School to get accepted because they officially were not allowed to accept any Jews, though about 10-15% of the school was still some how Jewish. She also had trouble because she applied for a visa to Israel before she finished Med School and was of course denied, but once you have that on your record no one is allowed to hire you so she had to do some more blackmail to get into residency when she completed residency she was finally given permission to leave. (Which was nice because she had no idea how to get a job once she finished residency after being a refusenik)