Select surface only/ don't select through the object?
 

I have been insanely frustrated with selecting points. Every time I go to select something, the exact same spot on the opposite side of the object gets selected too. Is there any way to stop this and only select points on the surface facing the camera? Thanks!

I've been using Maya for almost 2 months and I still havn't figured that one out yet. A half way solution that might ease some of the pain, some of the time is to goto shaded mode and then use the paint selection tool, which can't paint (select) through the object. You can adjust the paint brush size as needed.

Use the Paint Select Tool, in Maya 8 and 8.5 it is on the side tools menu buttons under the lasoo tool. In Maya 7 its found under Edit>Paint Selection Tool.

Backface culling is the option to stop selecting through objects ,but I never use it as most of the time I want to select all the verts, Paint selection tool is the way to go.

Great, thanks for the help!