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Isn't scheme just a dialect of lisp?

Both "Common Lisp" and various (!) Schemes are dialects of lisp.

As for why CL is preferred - it's probably about the ecosystem, tools and libraries. No Scheme and very few languages can compete with CL in this matter. However there is Rachet, a Scheme that has a chance to approach CL in the next decade (only my opinion).

Yes, it's a lighter (very minimalist) version of lisp, as opposed to common lisp. Scheme seemed like more of a fun academic exercise. If I wanted to actually do more complex work I'd probably look to common lisp instead of Scheme.

Scheme does have a feature that would be handy in Common Lisp: continuations with indefinite extent. PG has an interesting way to simulate this with macros in On Lisp, but that hardly suffices. It is not something that I frequently need, but I have had one or two cases when such a continuation would have come in handy.

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