A method for preparing the ground and low excited states with controllable populations of He atoms driven by a laser pulse is proposed based on an accurate angular-momentum-dependent model potential. The corresponding laser parameters of wavelength, peak intensity and pulse duration are obtained by the numerical solution of the three-dimensional time-dependent Schr dinger equation. The numerical simulation results show that for the 2s, 2p and 3p states, the populations at the end of laser pulse can all reach 100%, while for the states of 3s and 3d, the maximum populations are only 80% and 86%, respectively, because of their very close energy levels and small ionization probabilities.