Do higher end tuners pull in more stations

The answer is #3, but only if you also invest in a quality antennae. This site will give you the low down on tuners. The site will give you what stations are available in your area.

#4 the cool factor. When you show the tuner to your friends and tell them what you paid, your stock will go up.

A directional FM antenna on a rotator will produce better results with a midrange tuner than a top of the line tuner with a fixed antenna.

Most tuners today, even cheap ones, have excellent sensitivity. Actually, unless you live in the country (fringe area) sensitivity is not all that important. For city dwellers, where there are many stations, selectivity, multipath and adjacent channel rejection is the important parameter.

The quality of the audio amplifier circuits is something that high end tuners can brag about, but unfortunately the audio quality is often limited by the signal broadcast by the station, so that a midrange tuner is as good as it gets.
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Sadly, in today's milieu, Eldartford is exactly correct.

Eldartford & 4yanx make an interesting comment... what's the sense in spending MegaBuck$$ for a quality tuner to pick-up stations that the bean counters control and supply with the least expensive broadcast equipment they can get away with? I wonder what priority quality has in their broadcast equipment when they know the bulk of radio listeners do so when their cheap digital gear isn't available. Seems like there are too many variables totally out of ones control to invest too much in a tuner.