Schools are a little more forgiving of the verbal in general especially if English is not your native language. HAving said that, you should probably consider a prep course which focuses on verbal. Not to sound like a commercial, but Veritas will let you take a prep course only for verbal, which saves time and money. There are likely other prep courses that do the same thing--I am just more familiar with Veritas. If you decide to get consulting help on your essays, make sure you don't let anyone "handle" your essays too much, as an applicant with a lower verbal score turning in overly polished and perfectly articulate essays would be suspect. A professional consultant would not do this, but if you let friends or aquaintences edit your essays, they may tend to want to "help" you too much which could backfire. Hope this helps and good luck.