HI!
Rhino3d V4 don't support Mesh editing like 3dsMax.
There are a few command in Rhino3d Mesh menu. quite a few.
You can only modify Mesh in rhino by move vertics, but can't select face,
Polygon...
Nurbs data is quite complete and don't needed subdivided.
You can convert Nurbs to Polygon and adjust its Polygon mesh size.
But You can't convert it to Nurbs again. (except Degree 1 condition)
If you want to use subdivison modeling method in Rhino3d,
I recommand using T-splines Plugin.
Nurbs modeling are quite different than Polygon modeling.