sentences:  New York has hundreds of private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions.The state's land-grant university is Cornell University; though primarily a private institution, it has public sectors.Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, and the University of Rochester are widely regarded as the premier higher education institutions in New York, all of them leading, world-renowned universities and members of the Association of American Universities, the pre-eminent group of research universities in the United States.