How are scores read?

[occidorient]

I've read that some programs will look at all of your GRE scores and select the best scores from each individual sitting. For example, maybe in one sitting you had a high verbal and low quant, and in another high quant but low verbal, but programs will select the best score from each sitting in assessing your overall GRE score. Is this generally the case? What do we call this kind of approach? "Selective score evaluation?"