I just purchased Lightwave through that deal you are talking about. I'm not enrolled at any school and I certainly don't meet the strict requirements for the student pricing on Max right now, so the sale price on LW was a big factor in my decision. Remember that you have to own one of the qualifying products that they list to get that price on LW.

As I understand it 3DS Max is the program of choice for game producers and Lightwave is is the program of choice for Television animators. LW is also being used in more and more film projects lately.

At the same time you would be hard pressed to find any feature that one has that the other doesn't have...or doesn't have available to it in the form of a plug-in.

I don't think you can make a wrong decision here...both are very powerful tools. You might want to check the 3DS Max and Lightwave forums here to see what people have been doing with them to get some hints as to which program you might prefer.