Some of the smartest students in Carroll County might also be their own worst critics.

“I thought I could have done better,” said Ryan Childers, Central High School’s STAR student, giving his assessment of his score on the SAT reading test. “My reading score actually went down from the first time I took it.”

How did Bowdon High STAR student Walter Ingram feel about his SAT performance?

“I scored moderately well,” said Ingram. “It’s not an amazingly impressive score.”

What is or isn’t impressive is probably relative, given the lofty standards of students like Childers and Ingram, who were among nine high-achieving high school seniors recognized by the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce Thursday at the annual PAGE Student Teacher Achievement Recognition Breakfast Thursday.

The STAR student awards are based on SAT scores and class rank.

“They have a minimum average score that can be accepted and that’s 502 on reading, 515 on math and 494 on writing,” said Joy Holley assistant principal of Carrollton High School. “They have to score highest in their class on one testing date, which is one sitting.”

The students also have to be in the top 10 percent of their class numerically.

All of the area winners tested well above the minimum of 1511.

This year, ties were permitted if two or more students had identical scores, resulting in two STAR students from both Central and Temple. In the past, the schools had to use class rank as a tie breaker.

“I was surprised that I did as well as I did in the math, because it’s not my strong suit,” Victoria McDonald of Oak Mountain Academy said.

“It’s always been a thing where the SAT is so, kind of prestigious, and I didn’t think that I would be able to do so well on it,” Colton Campbell from Central said.

All of the students have applied to colleges and some have received acceptance letters. Ingram will have a choice of colleges since he has already received acceptance letters from three colleges. He, McDonald, Shannon Cooper from Temple High School and Julie Meigs from Mt. Zion High are leaning toward the University of West Georgia. Childers, Dustin Duncan from Villa Rica High and Kristen Powell of Carrollton High all plan to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology. Temple’s Josh Black is still deciding between Emory and Oxford College of Emory University. Campbell has his sights set on Auburn University in Alabama.

The students have a wide variety of interests from journalism to law to teaching to engineering, but all of them are passionate.

Campbell wants to major in journalism and hopes to cover politics and government when he graduates. He describes his future career in idealistic terms.

“I just think that communication’s just so important throughout every community and all through the nation that it should be preserved and celebrated,” Campbell said.

McDonald has a couple of career choices in mind. Because of her love of literature, she would like to write for a literary magazine, but she also wants to inspire other students to love language. She is thinking about a career as an English teacher.

“Writing well is a lost art,” McDonald said. “Instead, we all write in the little abbreviations and the texting. I’d like to teach children an appreciation for reading and good writing and stuff. It definitely made my life more meaningful.”

Powell is looking at a career as an architect. Designing buildings is something she has always loved, she said.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been drawing little doodles of houses and stuff in little notebooks,” Powell said.

STAR students choose a STAR teacher who has been very influential to them. The reasons they expressed for choosing the teachers they did went beyond the classroom and into life lessons.

Cooper chose her mother, Louise Cooper, as her most influential teacher. Cooper got a chance to see her mother’s influence not only on her, but on a multitude of students who went through her classrooms. Cooper’s fellow Temple STAR student, Black, also selected Cooper.

“She’s a very influential teacher,” Cooper said. “She’s a very strong teacher, a very determined teacher and I think she deserves it.”

Although she admits it wasn’t always easy having her mother as a teacher.

“She is harder on me than everybody else,” Cooper said laughing. “I have people that can testify to that. See, she won’t always deal with me at school but when we get home, that’s when I get it.”

“I learned more in her journalism class about how to handle deadlines and how to market time and how to handle stress, than I’ve learned from any other class,” Black said. “It was just a real learning experience as well as a life experience.”

Other students selected teachers because of their ability to bring the subjects alive for them. Powell chose her chemistry teacher, Kristie Bradford-Hunt, because of her enthusiasm.

“I never really liked science before and I got into chemistry, I just loved it,” Powell said. “The way she presents it, she makes it seem so usable.”

The students will now compete against students across the state in a district competition, he said.