  We investigate the formation of non-ground-state Bose-Einstein condensates
within the mean-field description represented by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation
(GPE). The objective is to form excited states of a condensate known as
nonlinear topological modes, which are stationary solutions of the GPE.
Nonlinear modes can be generated by modulating either the trapping potential or
the atomic scattering length. We show that it is possible to coherently control
the transitions to excited nonlinear modes by manipulating the relative phase
of the modulations. In addition, we show that the use of both modulations can
modify the speed of the transitions. In our analysis, we employ approximate
analytical techniques, including a perturbative treatment, and numerical
calculations for the GPE. Our study evidences that the coherent control of the
GPE presents novel possibilities which are not accessible for the Schr\"odinger
equation.
