The Moscone Center stretches across three buildings in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. Moscone West is visible in the foreground on the left.

A chaotic scene unfolded over the weekend in San Francisco after hundreds of hopeful college students weren’t able to take the SAT, just ahead of application season.

Rowan, a senior at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (whose last name is omitted at her request, in accordance with our ethics policy), was one of them. After sitting through heavy traffic then walking four blocks, she arrived at the Moscone Center early Saturday morning and navigated through a swarm of anxious, sleep-deprived teenagers. 

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But after several hours of waiting, Rowan told SFGATE she wasn’t able to take the test at all. She was one of 600 students who missed their opportunity because of a Wi-Fi issue at the venue. 

“I was pretty dismayed,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, God.’ I really just wanted this to be over with. It was frustrating.” 

In a statement to SFGATE, the College Board said more than 4,000 students were scheduled Saturday to take the test, which is administered in a digital format as of last year. Administrators successfully tested the Wi-Fi on Friday, the organization said, but had “issues” with it Saturday morning. 

Even before the Wi-Fi issues started, Rowan described the scene at the Moscone Center as hectic. She recalled walking up to the venue with an “enormous crowd of teenagers taking up the whole sidewalk” before arriving at a testing room.

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“There was an enormous room that kind of felt like an airport, like crisscrossing lines of people........

© SFGate