Abstract. Objective: The Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD) standardized letter of recommendation (SLOR) has become a common, reliable, and useful tool in the evaluation of emergency medicine (EM) applicants. A ''guaranteed match'' (GM) is the SLOR's bottom-line superlative response. It is also the SLOR's least common superlative response. Because candidates receiving a GM are a select group, the authors thought it would be useful to identify SLOR information that predicts a GM recommendation. Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a database of all EM SLORs submitted to a single EM residency during the 1998-1999 application cycle to one EM residency program. Response to GM and 16 data points in the background/qualification sections were analyzed by chi-square, univariate analysis, and logistic regression. Results: Four hundred eleven SLORs were analyzed. Qualification information was more predictive than background information for applicants receiving a GM. The highest univariate odds ratios for background information were