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There is a substantial strand of literature about ranking the subsets of a set of alternatives, usually referred to as opportunity sets. We investigate a model that is dependent on the preference of a grand set of alternatives. In this framework, the indirect-utility criterion ranks the opportunity sets by the following rule: a subset <i>A</i> is weakly preferred to another subset <i>B</i> if and only if <i>A</i> contains at least one preference maximizing element from <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>A</mi><mo>∪</mo><mi>B</mi></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula>. This criterion leads to the indifference of each subset of alternatives to a singleton; symmetry appears at this stage, as the property holds true for any one of the maximizers in <i>A</i>. Conversely, suppose that a ranking of opportunity sets satisfies the property that each opportunity set is indifferent to a singleton contained within it. Then, we prove that such a ranking must use a generalized form of the indirect-utility criterion, where maximization is applied to a selection of the alternatives. Altogether, these results produce a characterization of the advised indirect-utility criterion for ranking opportunity sets.