A method and apparatus for sensing the vibrational response of a slider of predetermined dimensions during contact with one or more surface asperities on a recording surface, separating the response into its individual bending mode frequency component responses, determining one or more bending mode frequency responses which display monotonic behavior with increasing asperity interference, and designing a mode selection sensor optimized to detect the monotonic bending mode frequency identified. The mode enhanced sensor is designed by first analyzing the stress distribution of the slider corresponding to the monotonic bending mode frequency, identifying regions of the slider which experience substantially positive or substantially negative stress, and partitioning the upper conductive layer of a piezoelectric sensor to form a partitions corresponding to each of the identified regions. The sensor may be further enhanced by tailoring the partitions to exclude undesirable stress contributions.