Dominick Ambroise’s drive to succeed guided by late mother’s spirit
Dominick Ambroise’s 46-year-old mother, Yanique, may have lost her battle with breast cancer five years ago when he was only 16. But the graduating honors student, who recently said thanks but no thanks to Harvard University after being offered a scholarship to its dental school, credits this Haitian-born family matriarch with his overwhelming drive to succeed at everything he does.
“From the time I was very young she thought I was special,” says Ambroise, who will graduate with a degree in biological sciences and nutrition from the School of Arts and Sciences and attend the prestigious Columbia University College of Dental Medicine this fall with the help of a hefty academic scholarship. “She always knew I could do better. I remember before she died, when I was still in high school, she told me she would get me the new Jordan sneakers I really wanted if I got a 99 average for the year. Unfortunately she died not knowing that I got the 99.”
Ambroise never got the sneakers. It didn’t matter. Academic achievements followed. The teenager who only a few years earlier had self-esteem problems because of gaps in his teeth and burns on his chest from an accidental scalding as a toddler, graduated from his high school in Queens, New York, with high honors. He was accepted to some of the country’s top universities and chose Rutgers after receiving the James Dickson Carr Scholarship offered to outstanding minority students on the basis of academic promise.
At Rutgers, Ambroise’s drive and pursuit of excellence continued. He made the dean’s list and entered the Rutgers’ Office for Diversity and Academic Success in Sciences (ODASIS) program whose goal, in part, is to increase the academic success of underrepresented students. He was a member of the university band his first year, worked at the college recreation center, and served as a resident assistant, a consultant in the computer lab, and a science tutor. This year, Ambroise taught a course to eight students getting ready to take the Dental Admission Test (DAT) and one who was taking the entrance exam to become an optometrist. He will graduate with a 3.7 GPA.
It was at Rutgers, as a first-year student, that Ambroise knew he had to do something to commemorate the influence his mother had on his academic success and on his plans to become an orthodontist as a result of the positive impact his own orthodontist had on his life as a boy.
When Ambroise was in high school he carried a photograph of his mother dressed as a geisha on Halloween. It dangled from a keychain adorned with her favorite collectibles – turtle figures and amethyst colored stones – his gift to her before she died. But he was older now and Ambroise, who says he has his father’s reserved, nurturing personality and his mother’s brain and love of knowledge, needed something that would more appropriately honor her memory.
Today, the 21-year-old Ambroise wears a large picture of his mother, in her cap and gown graduating from Pratt Institute in Manhattan, on a chunky silver chain that dangles half way down his chest. The 6’4” Ambroise had her favorite saying engraved on the back – “love is not something you give or receive, love is something that is returned” – and wears it every day, close to his heart.
“Even when I have to go somewhere and dress more formal, then I might tuck it into my shirt,” he says. “But it is always there, all the time.”
And it will be there on graduation day as well. His father, Rony, – whose College of Staten Island ring he wears on his right hand – as well as his three brothers, girlfriend, and extended family, who mostly reside in Queens and Miami will be there to cheer him on for all of his academic achievements: ranking in the 98th percentile among students throughout the nation that took the Dental Admission Test (DAT) that day; being one of the top ranked dental school prospects in the country; and holding the office of president of the Haitian Association at Rutgers this year. His mother, he says, will be there with him in spirit.
So will the memory of his good friend Tereston (TJ) Bertrand, whose dreams of going to dental school were cut short when he died suddenly while out jogging last summer at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The two School of Arts and Science students had applied to four of the same dental schools – Harvard, Columbia, University of Maryland, and UMDNJ. They had studied incessantly together before taking the dental boards, celebrated together when they did well and even spent the last Easter before Bertrand’s tragic death celebrating the holiday here at Rutgers with Ambroise’s girlfriend after Bertrand decided he didn’t have enough time to get home.
“I know that if TJ were here we probably would be going to Columbia together,” Ambroise says. “I would have loved to have been able to talk to him about making this decision about Harvard or Columbia. Everyone says just make a decision, they are both great schools what’s the big deal. TJ would have understood.”