I'm sure what you're saying is true for that particular school, but they sound like an exception. I've gotten the impression that most schools in the US care very little about the writing score. (In Canada, on the other hand, they care quite a lot.) I got an S on that section twice, and it was never mentioned at any of my interviews; I also recall a hilarious story from the Most Bizarre Interview Moments thread where a guy who scored O in writing was asked by his interviewer why he got a "zero" for that section.
Whoa, careful there. I have heard that same idea repeated pretty frequently, and based on my own experience, I'd say it's wildly exaggerated. I'd state it more as follows: If all the other sections of your MCAT are at least good, a very high verbal score could get you extra brownie points. If, on the other hand, one or more of them is low, verbal isn't going to save you.
I was one of those outliers who got a really unbalanced MCAT score: verbal was very high (13), bio good (11), but PS was terrible (7), because I was really nervous and blew my time management, causing me to leave questions blank when time expired. By this surgeon's thinking, a 31S with a 13 in verbal, along with good grades from a well-known postbacc, should have given me a shot at a lot of places. I did get an acceptance to med school recently, but only because I applied super-broadly (27 schools) and was relentless with LOIs and update letters to all of them.
Meanwhile, I've been waitlisted at the other 3 schools where I've had decisions (2 more are pending), and I think the PS score may have played a role. (That's why I took the test for the third time on 1/31.) Most sobering of all, I've been rejected without interviews, placed on hold or ignored at 10 of the 12 schools in my native state, NY; the only NY schools that have invited me are the 2 upstate SUNYs, Upstate and Buffalo, even though I live in NYC. Some of the very schools which have publicly stated that they "love" high verbal scores have tossed my app in the trash without a second thought. And these were not all elite schools, either: if SUNY Downstate rejected me after 2 weeks with a 13 VR, I can't say that it's worth much.
The way adcoms seem to think, I'd say you're only as good as your WEAKEST section on the MCAT. Sounds harsh, but it's pretty true.
