I'm just a grade 3 piano student, but I intend doing diplomas etc eventually, and I'm just wondering, is diploma easier or more difficult than I think it is.
For example, would this piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaX1j4elJRU&feature=fvw
be more difficult than diploma level? or is that diploma level?
If anyone could shed a little light that would be great

The Liszt is on the LTCL diploma repertoire list.

To be honest at your current level they are probably harder than you think, don't think of a diploma as Grade 9 - it's a far bigger gap from grade 8 than you would expect.

A dimpoma - probably something along the lines of a dimple, I think. More soft and fleshy than hard...

Cancer of the dimples I think - not a pleasant condition..

Holy Carp!!!!! I doubt I will ever play at anywhere near that level

Not necessarily: the suffix -oma on it's own implies a benign growth, like an adenoma or a lipoma etc. An adenocarcinoma is malignant, as is a liposarcoma. (For most purposes, malignant = cancer). There are exceptions: Lymphoma is malignant, as is Leukaemia.

So a dimpoma would (probably) be a benign growth arising in a dimple, or possibly from a tissue structure called dimp (if there was such a thing!) Still sounds unpleasant though.

Back on topic though, from experience I would say that from the waymark of grade 3, grade 8 looks impossibly hard and the map of the musical landscape beyond is merely marked with the phrase "here be monsters": a diploma is just too hard too imagine. The closer you get to it the less impossible it seems but, as has been pointed out, it is a lot more than just "grade 9". It has been suggested elsewhere that the jump from grade 8 to diploma is about the same as the jump from grade 5 to grade 8, maybe bigger. Even then, thinking of it as "grade 11 or 12" is wrong as it's a different type of exam.

For the moment, hold the long term ambition but concentrate on the short term goals (the next practice session, the next lesson) the medium term goals (the next piece, the next technical challenge, the next exam) and then when you have grade 8, in a couple of years (?), take stock and re-assess.

Another exception is melanoma...oh, why can't they get it right from the start?

then there is the coloboma, which isn't a growth at all...

To me, diploma is a challenge. It took me lots of patience and determination as well as discipline for practice to produce a confident playing. If you keep going with keen interest, you'll achieve it for sure.

Not to mention the haematoma, the pyoma and the seroma (fluid collections of blood, pus and serum respectively). Oh yes, medical terminology in English can be at least as illogical, confused and confusing as normal English, frequently more so!