There is some evidence on Live circa 2004 that stats did directly effect skill up chances. According to
this post on EQ Traders Corner, there are two checks to see if you get a skill up, and one of them includes your stat score. If you read the whole first post, he goes on to show examples of how different stat scores give different chances of a skill up.
No one was able to confirm this for p1999 when it was asked before, so I can't tell you if it holds up exactly the same here. I would imagine they at least modeled the one here on something similar.