Enduriel: You are right, the tools are all somewhat similar. Lightwave also can paint weight maps and use it for shading or bones / animations. Pelt-mapping is very common. The professional modelers told that Modo has the best uv-tools currently.

Many schools teach the most expensive tools (Max and Maya, just like in your case). But this is quite old-school. As you could see in this forum thread: a mixture of Modo and Zbrush will easily beat Max / Maya in terms of modeling. But if you want to do modeling, animation and rendering for a cheap price, then Lightwave is the right way. You can even buy Lightwave, ZBrush, Modo and Bodypaint3d and you are still way below the price of Max and Maya.

There is much more than what they teach at schools.