Becas SECIHTI (Formerly CONACYT, Formerly CONAHCYT): Mexico’s Becas Nacionales, Eligibility, and the Rizoma Route

Quick answer

Becas SECIHTI — still searched for overwhelmingly as becas CONACYT, and for a period officially becas CONAHCYT — is Mexico’s national postgraduate scholarship programme, run by the Secretaría de Ciencia, Humanidades, Tecnología e Innovación. The domestic modality, Becas Nacionales, funds especialidad, maestría and doctorado study inside Mexico. Two things decide whether you can apply at all, and neither is about your grades:

1. Your postgraduate programme must be registered in the Sistema Nacional de Posgrados (SNP) and be in an eligible category. Programme eligibility is set by the SNP Lineamientos, not by the scholarship office.
2. Your programme coordinator — not you — must register your matrícula in Rizoma. If the Becas Nacionales convocatoria does not appear inside your Perfil Único, that is almost always the reason, and the fix is with your programme coordination, not with the SECIHTI helpdesk.

The application route is Rizoma / Perfil Único (rizoma.secihti.mx). SECIHTI’s own applicant FAQ tells you to check your SNP-registered programme in Rizoma and not in MIIC — so third-party walkthroughs of the old MIIC capture screens are describing a route that no longer applies to a new application.

Amounts are not a permanent published figure. SECIHTI states that the Reglamento de Becas and each convocatoria define the categories and amounts the beca and any complementary support cover, together with the eligibility criteria. Any specific peso figure you find online belongs to one convocatoria cycle and should be read from the live convocatoria, never from a guide.

The three names, and why this page carries all of them

The organisation is one continuous lineage: CONACYT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología) became CONAHCYT following the 2023 Ley General en Materia de Humanidades, Ciencias, Tecnologías e Innovación, and then became SECIHTI, a full cabinet secretariat. CASRAI’s guide to the SECIHTI restructuring and what actually changed covers the lineage, the legal instruments and the effective dates; this page does not restate them.

Verification note, stated plainly: the Diario Oficial de la Federación (dof.gob.mx) and the Cámara de Diputados law library (diputados.gob.mx) were both unreachable from the network used to research this page on 26 August 2026 — a TLS name mismatch and a connection timeout respectively. The rename sequence above is therefore reported here as sequence, not as independently re-verified DOF citations. Confirm publication dates against DOF directly if you need to cite them in a legal or contractual document.

What matters operationally is narrower and is directly observable: the rename has not propagated evenly through SECIHTI’s own systems, and that is not a sign of a dead or spoofed service. Verified 26 August 2026:

• SECIHTI’s Becas Nacionales page links its platforms at rizoma.conahcyt.mx, apeiron.conacyt.mx and miic.conacyt.mx — two superseded brand domains.
• SECIHTI’s own Asignación de Becas Nacionales applicant FAQ PDF, hosted on secihti.mx, still prints www.conahcyt.mx in its page footer while directing applicants to rizoma.secihti.mx in its first answer.
• The convocatoria URL that same FAQ tells applicants to watch — secihti.mx/convocatorias/convocatorias-becas-nacionales/convocatorias-abiertas-becas-nacionales/ — returned 404 when checked. The working entry point is the general convocatorias index at secihti.mx/convocatorias.

Practical consequence: judge a SECIHTI system by whether the agency’s current site links to it, not by the brand in its domain name, and treat any deep link taken from a document more than one convocatoria old as likely to have moved.

Who is eligible for Becas Nacionales

From SECIHTI’s own programme description, the Becas Nacionales programme is directed at Mexican and foreign nationals enrolled in postgraduate programmes registered in the Sistema Nacional de Posgrados (SNP), subject to the participation terms each convocatoria sets. Two points there are routinely got wrong by secondary guides:

• Foreign nationals are not excluded from the national modality. The programme description names personas de nacionalidad mexicana y extranjera. What each convocatoria adds is the participation terms — read those, do not assume exclusion. SECIHTI’s applicant FAQ answers a residency question by pointing at the Ley de Migración conditions for lawful stay: visitante, residente temporal, residente permanente.
• The gate is the programme, not the applicant. Eligibility of a postgraduate programme is established in the SNP Lineamientos and in the governing-board agreement setting the areas and themes for professionalisation-oriented postgraduate programmes. You cannot argue your way past a programme that is not eligible.

Additional conditions SECIHTI states explicitly in the Becas Nacionales applicant FAQ:

• Level. The beca is for especialidad, maestría or doctorado in an SNP-registered and accepted programme. It is not awarded to an individual studying outside that structure — there is no independent or self-nominated route.
• Holding a previous beca. If you are in the process of concluding a current beca, you may apply once the trámite de conclusión is complete, as a requirement of the convocatoria.
• Employment. SECIHTI states it imposes no limitation based on your economic or employment activity, including public-sector employment paid from public funds. Your own institution’s internal rules may impose one — check the programme’s normativa, not SECIHTI’s.
• SNP recategorisation. If your programme has just been recategorised, the becas platform needs time to reflect it — SECIHTI says to allow at least a week before treating a blocked application as a system error.

The CVU and Perfil Único prerequisite

You apply from inside your Perfil Único in Rizoma, and your CVU is the record that Perfil Único is built around. This is a genuine prerequisite, not a formality: incomplete CVU fields block the application rather than merely flagging it. SECIHTI’s Becas Nacionales FAQ carries an example — applicants report the platform refusing to proceed because the Asentamiento field is required in the CVU, and the fix is to complete the field in Perfil Único and press guardar so the data actually persists.

CASRAI covers the identifier and its capture flow separately: see how the CVU works, how Rizoma’s Perfil Único registration runs, and which fields block an application. Get the CVU complete before a convocatoria opens; the FAQ warns that a technical problem raised in the days immediately before a convocatoria closes is not guaranteed to be resolved in time for the beca to be granted.

The related researcher-recognition system, SNII (formerly SNI), is a different programme with its own criteria and shares the same Perfil Único front door. Being a becario is not membership of SNII, and vice versa.

Which platform you use — decided by award date, not by preference

SECIHTI splits Becas Nacionales platform access by when the beca was obtained. Verified from the agency’s Becas Nacionales page, 26 August 2026:

Situation	Platform
New application to an open Becas Nacionales convocatoria	Rizoma / Perfil Único — rizoma.secihti.mx
Beca obtained from October 2023 onward — procedures, tracking, bank-account capture	Rizoma and Apeiron
Becas Nacionales obtained before October 2023	PeopleSoft and MIIC

This is the detail that makes conflicting online instructions make sense: guides written for a becario holding a pre-October-2023 award are correct for that person and wrong for a new applicant. If a walkthrough starts by sending you to MIIC to apply, it is out of date — SECIHTI’s FAQ says the SNP-registered programme must be checked in Rizoma and not in MIIC.

A CVU issued in the CONACYT or CONAHCYT era is unchanged and remains yours; the identifier persisted across both renames and across the platform migration.

Amounts: what SECIHTI actually publishes, and what it does not

SECIHTI does not publish a standing peso amount for Becas Nacionales. Its programme description states that the Reglamento de Becas and the corresponding convocatorias define the organisation and functioning of the programme, the categories and amounts the beca and complementary support cover, and the eligibility criteria. In other words, every figure is convocatoria-scoped by design.

Consequences for anyone budgeting or advising:

• Do not carry a stipend figure forward between cycles. Read it from the open convocatoria and its tabuladores, and date-stamp it in your own records.
• The beca duration is set by the programme duration, offset by one month. SECIHTI’s worked example: studies starting 1 February with a 24-month programme produce a beca running 1 March to 28 February, 24 months. The system shifting your dates by a month is expected behaviour, not an error.
• The one monetary condition that is not a stipend figure, from the 2025 Asignación de Becas Nacionales FAQ: the bank account you register must be capable of receiving deposits above 80,000 pesos, or be unlimited. This is an account-capability requirement, and it is stated for the 2025 convocatoria — treat it as convocatoria-specific and reconfirm against the cycle you are applying to.
• Tax. SECIHTI states that the SAT recognises a SECIHTI beca as a federal support free of tax. SECIHTI directs detailed questions to the SAT itself rather than answering them; do the same.

The status ladder from application to first payment

SECIHTI publishes the sequence a Becas Nacionales application moves through, with notifications sent to the email registered in your Perfil Único at each change. This is the reference to check against when an application appears to have stalled:

1. Postulación — En captura, then Enviada.
2. Asignación — Revisada, Pre asignada, Registro de cuenta bancaria, Asignada, and Finalizada where the process does not continue. SECIHTI states that five business days may elapse between each of these steps.
3. Formalización, applicant side — you sign the solicitud and the convenio.
4. Formalización, agency side — the Director de Becas y Posgrado signs, using CURP. Formalisation documents cannot be downloaded until this signature is in place.
5. Pago.

Two payment intervals appear in SECIHTI’s own 2025 FAQ, anchored to different events, and both are reproduced here rather than reconciled: payment is made within 20 business days after the Director de Becas y Posgrado signs, provided the bank account is correctly registered and active; and elsewhere in the same document, payment begins within approximately 30 business days after the date of formalisation. If neither window is met and you have had no notification, SECIHTI directs you to [email protected], copying [email protected].

Bank account and dependants — the two avoidable ways to lose an award

• The account must be your own. Registering a third party’s account can cause the solicitud to be terminated for breach of the Reglamento de Becas. Any Mexican bank is accepted, subject to the deposit-capability condition above.
• Do not change the account mid-process. SECIHTI recommends against changing or updating the registered account while the solicitud is in progress, because it can disrupt the first deposit.
• Dependants are direct dependants only. The solicitud permits a spouse and children. Parents cannot be registered as dependants.

Complementary support (apoyo complementario) is additional funding on top of the beca, and it has a sequencing rule worth knowing before you try: you can only request it once you are a persona becaria vigente, which SECIHTI defines as having received your first beca deposit. A formalised solicitud is not sufficient.

Where to escalate, and to whom

SECIHTI splits Becas Nacionales contact by function, and sending a query to the wrong address is a common cause of delay:

• Postulación and formalización — [email protected]
• Seguimiento (payments, tracking after award) — [email protected]
• Technical faults in Rizoma, bank-account capture or dependants — the Centro de Contacto de Atención, [email protected], or (55) 5322-7708
• Student registration in the postgraduate programme platform — [email protected]
• Switchboard — (55) 5322-7700, attention 09:00–15:00 Monday to Friday, Av. Insurgentes Sur 1582, Col. Crédito Constructor, C.P. 03940, Benito Juárez, Ciudad de México

SECIHTI states that a ticket number from the Centro de Contacto is what makes an incident actionable, and that without one it does not accept responsibility for the award outcome. If a platform fault threatens your submission, raise a ticket and keep the number — screenshots alone are not the record the agency works from.

Where Becas Nacionales sits among the other modalities

Becas Nacionales is one modality within SECIHTI’s postgraduate scholarship family, which also includes scholarships for study abroad, scholarships for foreign students, national and international postdoctoral and sabbatical stays, repatriation and retention support, and targeted equity modalities. CASRAI’s SECIHTI programme overview lists the family; this page covers only the domestic postgraduate modality, because that is where the SNP gate, the coordinator dependency and the Rizoma route apply.

For comparison with how neighbouring national systems handle the same problem, see CNPq’s Plataforma Carlos Chagas in Brazil, MESCyT’s becas programmes in the Dominican Republic, and the researcher-CV registries that gate applications elsewhere in the region — CVar in Argentina and CTI Vitae in Peru. The pattern is consistent across Latin America: the CV registry is the prerequisite, and the funding call is layered on top of it. The wider funding-lifecycle context sits in CASRAI’s grants management pillar.

What this page does not assert

Stated explicitly so it is not mistaken for an omission:

• No stipend amount. SECIHTI publishes amounts only inside the Reglamento de Becas and each convocatoria; no permanent figure was found on the agency’s site and none is reproduced here.
• No open convocatoria deadline. Checked 26 August 2026: SECIHTI’s Becas Nacionales page displayed the notice “La convocatoria se publicará próximamente”, and the deep link its own 2025 FAQ gives for open calls returned 404. The 2025 FAQ states the convocatoria is normally published during the first three months of the year. Read the live convocatorias index for dates.
• No DOF citations for the renames. DOF and diputados.gob.mx were unreachable at the time of writing, as noted above.
• No claim that these rules generalise to the other modalities. The SNP registration gate, the coordinator-registers-your-matrícula dependency and the October 2023 platform split are documented here for Becas Nacionales. Becas al Extranjero has its own postulación guides and its own blocking fields.
• Figures reproduced from the 2025 Asignación de Becas Nacionales FAQ — the five-business-day step interval, the 20- and 30-business-day payment windows and the 80,000-peso account condition — are labelled by that document’s own cycle. They are the agency’s published statements for 2025, not permanent programme rules.

Frequently asked questions

Is it still correct to call these “becas CONACYT”?

As history, yes — an award made under CONACYT is accurately described as a CONACYT beca. For a live application, the counterparty is SECIHTI, and new paperwork, CVs and funding acknowledgements should name SECIHTI. The search term survives because it is what people type, not because it is the current institutional name.

Why can I not see the Becas Nacionales convocatoria in my Perfil Único?

SECIHTI’s own answer is that your postgraduate programme coordination has not registered your data in the Sistema Nacional de Posgrados, or has registered it incorrectly — for example at the wrong level. The registration of your matrícula is performed by the programme coordination in Rizoma, not by you. Go to your coordination first; a helpdesk ticket cannot substitute for the registration.

Can a foreign national get a Becas Nacionales award?

The programme description names both Mexican and foreign nationals, conditioned on enrolment in an SNP-registered programme and on each convocatoria’s participation terms. SECIHTI’s FAQ addresses residency by reference to the Ley de Migración categories — visitante, residente temporal, residente permanente. Confirm against the convocatoria you are applying to, since participation terms are set per call.

Do I need a CVU before applying?

Yes, in practice. You apply from within Perfil Único, which is built on your CVU, and incomplete CVU fields block submission rather than warning you. Complete it before the convocatoria opens — see the CASRAI guide to the CVU and Rizoma Perfil Único.

How much is the scholarship?

SECIHTI does not publish a standing amount. The Reglamento de Becas and each convocatoria set the categories and amounts. Any figure quoted without a convocatoria and a date attached should be treated as unreliable.

My beca predates October 2023 — do I move to Rizoma?

Not for the procedures attached to that award. SECIHTI directs becas obtained before October 2023 to PeopleSoft and MIIC, and becas obtained from October 2023 onward to Rizoma and Apeiron. A new application, whenever your previous award was made, goes through Rizoma.

Can I apply while I am still finishing a current beca?

SECIHTI states that the convocatoria requires the trámite de conclusión of the current beca to be completed before you can apply.

Sources verified for this page

• SECIHTI, Becas Nacionales programme page, secihti.mx/becas-nacionales — programme objective, target population, SNP condition, platform split by award date, contact addresses. Fetched 26 August 2026.
• SECIHTI, Dirección General de Becas y Apoyos a la Comunidad Científica y Humanística, Preguntas frecuentes — Asignación de Becas Nacionales 2025 (PDF, hosted on secihti.mx) — Rizoma application route, the “Rizoma and not MIIC” instruction, coordinator-registers-matrícula rule, SNP recategorisation wait, status ladder and intervals, bank-account and dependants rules, tax statement, apoyo complementario sequencing, ticket requirement. Fetched 26 August 2026.
• SECIHTI convocatorias index, secihti.mx/convocatorias — live entry point for open calls. Checked 26 August 2026.

Not consulted for this page because they were unreachable at the time of writing: Diario Oficial de la Federación and the Cámara de Diputados law library. Claims that would have depended on them are flagged above rather than asserted.