Abstract: One of the main problems encountered in noncovalent molecular imprinting is that the molecularly imprinted polymer (MIPs) posses binding cavities with a wide range of affinities for the template molecule. This has been termed the "polyclonality" of MIPs and is responsible for the exaggerated tailing of the peaks (especially of the template molecule) due to a diminishing number of sites with increasing binding strengths. We present the first successful attempt to reduce the polyclonality of MIPs. By judicious methylation of the polymer in the presence of the original template molecule. the selectivity of the polymer was enhanced by more than 10% over the untreated polymer. Moreover, we demonstrate that the presence of the template molecule during the methylation actually protects the specific sites for alkylation