Reviewing for tests

In ten years of teaching at the college level, I have never found a satisfactory approach to reviewing for a test. Here are some of the things I’ve tried and the issues that arise:

1. Distribute a topic list and then field questions in the order in which students bring them up. Issue: The class time usually gets dominated by a couple of students who have massive questions about stuff that takes up a lot of time. E.g., “Could you go over the Chain Rule?” There’s no way to determine whether it’s just the one student with that question or 90% of the class. Also, it’s biased toward the more vocal and less inhibited students.
2. Distribute a topic list and then ask for questions, then ask the students which ones are the most important, and then make a little queue based on student value. Issue: Still no way to know how much detail to go into if the question is broad or deep. Typically the students that need the most help are precisely the ones who don’t know the topic well enough to target their question effectively, so if someone brings up “the Chain Rule” as a topic to review, I have no way of knowing how much detail is maximally instructive. And it takes time to make the queue.
3. Distribute a topic list, and then break students up into groups of three or four to work with each other for 20 minutes, then field the aggregate questions as a whole class. Issue: The students who have the most needs end up screwing around and not generating questions.
4. Distribute a topic list, and then have students work individually or in groups on whatever it is they need to work on, and be available for personalized help. Issue: See #3.
5. Distribute a topic list and then assign a few representative exercises to be done individually or in groups; offer individual help as needed throughout the class. Issue: See #3, and some students end up thinking that the test is going to be EXACTLY LIKE the exercises given in the review and spend the remainder of their study time focusing on 100 instances of those 2-3 problems.
6. Distribute the topic list a few days out from the test and tell students to come to office hours if they have questions. I.e. have no in-class review at all. Issue: Makes students unhappy and feel that I am not preparing them for the test.

I’m open to suggestions as to how to do this effectively. Honestly, I am leaning toward option #6 in the future. I have the sense that the real preparation for a test consists in the day-to-day practice for the class itself — and if you haven’t done the reading and the homework on a consistent basis, a 50-minute review period isn’t going to do anything but give you a false sense of security.