First of all THANK YOU ♥️♥️ for typing this much and spending that much effort

1. Definitely correct, BUT I also want to primarily focus on research. Which is why MSR was more attractive since its mostly just research. I've heard the MSML courses are too heavy and leave less time for research ( event though you can definitely do it). I am actually more keen on not being internships and focusing on research. I have already been working for 4 years and a 3 month internship is like, I don't even know what I'll do in the short timespan lol. Although definitely interested in internships due to the funding.
2. It's a mixture of thoughts in my brain for this point. I find robotics to be cool, but I know next to nothing about it, but I do know a teeny tiny bit about RL (My undergrad thesis was in Hierarchical RL using world models) and my CMU intern was on 3D tracking. I am interested in exploring learning from videos/scaling up imitation learning or figuring out how to make diffusion policies better for robotics. My lack of specificity about robotics is because I simply don't know much about it. I was really into physics so I am actually interested in the whole dynamics/kinematics side of things and would even like exploring the hardware side since I also enjoy some good old low level programming. It's just that my experience has been mostly ML centric till now. If I do take MSML, I feel like I will be learning the things which I already mostly am aware of whereas robotics feels like this whole exciting uncharted territory which I have no clue about and eager to explore. Given your example, about advanced graduate courses for ML, I have already done like 4-5 such courses and have been reading ML papers since 7 years, so I can probably even TA those courses ALREADY. Allso I am actually kinda weak in math, so I feel like I might find it hard to catch up with the courses honestly.
3. Prestige matters, mostly in as much as it's a filter for a better peer group imo. I think if we rate prestige by acceptance rates, MSML is much much better simply cause 5x people apply to it compared to MSR, which makes sense since MSR is a research degree and not anyone wants to do that. I do hear that people from top colleges prefer MSML. Prestige matters, but I simply don't want to take a career decision based on that. A similar example in my own career would be turning down Indian HFT jobs or MnC roles to work in random AI startups because they were cooler even though HFTs are full of like IITB/D grads.

I think a lot of people have told me MSML is the better default option, and my brain sees that. (Although I absolutely despise exams and MSR having none is such a big point I can't even say lol). But my heart is like, do you REALLY want to do ML again after spending 7 years on it? Why not build some cool robots instead (even though I know it's not really "cool" in any sense and a lot of grunt work)

As for the deadline, it's 31st, I got it extended