if you can meet their requirements then you can get 3dsmax at $899 for an educational version. newtek is offering a promotion on lightwave 6.5, if you own one of a pretty long list of programs then you get $1500 off the software -- bringing it down to $995. rhino 3d is vastly overpriced at 800 dollars. it lacks many of the features of max/lightwave yet costs almost as much. its nowhere near in the same league. why dont you go to www.discreet.com and request a free trial version of 3dsmax, download a 30-day trial of rhino3d and decide from there. i dont know if lightwave has a trial version. stay FAR away from carrara, its a buggy, half-finished POS.