Help! About to upgrade my 2017 27" iMac to MacBook Pro ASAP!

@wcervera this is an Apple question....but, I also gone ahead and had the talk for myself as some of my students were able to take advantage of the Back to School specials that allowed them to get up to $300 off plus and another $200 gift card. 

My four students ended up getting the MacBook Air, but only because they were primarly are using it for web development, and not planning to do anything serious. 

My fifth student is a graphic designer and plans to do video editing. She plans to keep it for a few years, so, I suggested to get Apple M3 Max chip, 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU. It does come with 48Gigs of RAM, but with AI technology, Apple did say the unified memory should be able to handle whatever AI tech is now. What happens down the road is a different story. If money is no object, I would get the 128gigs of RAM. If money is, then shoot for the 64GB or 96Gig (the 96GB is only for the Apple M3 Pro chip with 12‑core CPU, 18‑core GPU and 16‑core Neural Engine model). I also suggest in getting the Apple Care as well. For you, you need the M3. And if I had the choice, it would be a MacBook Pro M3 Max, especially, for running CAD, the MacBook Pro is generally the better choice due to its superior performance and graphics capabilities when dealing with large files for tradeshow graphics.