@notsohelpfulmom, these are both fine schools of course, but very different in character. Skidmore has a business major, for example, a discipline that you would not find at Reed (although some Reedie friends of mine have gone on to MBAs). I can’t speak from experience about Skidmore but I can about Reed.
Reed was intense, no doubt about it, but the fact of being surrounded by nerdy students who were happy to hit the books makes for a very welcoming atmosphere if you are cut from the same cloth. I loved it. If you have strong study skills, the workload was not too hard to manage.
I was an international studies major (now called international and comparative policy studies – an interdisciplinary major of econ., history and pol. sci) and like @trippfolsom, found grad school (Johns Hopkins) a breeze after Reed.
In terms of the “party” culture that @sisternight referred to, I spent a semester at Georgetown and found it much worse (particularly binge drinking) at GT. The only difference was that students were far more open about partying at Reed. Frankly, Reed is not the kind of place where you can party hard and still stay on top of your studies. Students figure that out fairly early on.