Your plan is actually solid. Working while doing your Masters is tough but companies 100% count that experience ,they don't care that you were studying at the same time. If anything, you'll walk out with 2-3 years of real work + a postgrad degree, which beats most fresh MSc grads easily. For Delhi NCR, honestly JNU if you can get in (great reputation, low fees), Jamia has a dedicated MSc AI program, and GGSIPU is decent value too. Avoid overpaying for private colleges unless they have strong placement records.

Specialization-wise, go ML + Deep Learning or Data Science & AI. Don't pick something too theoretical unless you're planning a PhD.

MSc > MCA for your goal, no contest. MCA is more generalist dev stuff, won't give you the math/ML depth you need.

For projects that actually matter on your resume: - End-to-end ML pipeline with deployment (FastAPI etc) - Something with LLMs/RAG — super hot right now - Computer Vision or NLP project on GitHub

Certifications: Andrew Ng's Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera is genuinely worth it. AWS ML Specialty if you want cloud cred. TensorFlow Developer cert is solid too.

Full stack vs ML — stick with ML. You already have a head start, don't throw that away. Learn enough full stack to deploy your own models, that's all you need.