<p>I’m sorry, but it definitely is unethical. There is a reason the schools don’t ask students to recommend themselves but require a professor to do that. Common practice or not, that is serious cheating and both you and the professor are betraying the trust of the system.</p>
<p>It’s obviously good for you, given that the mischief is not revealed, in which case you and your recommender could instantly lose much credibility, because once you find how much you can gain from cheating, it is not easy to stop doing that. Cheating tells you value your own personal gain more than that of a system, which means you are less able to resist plagiarizing and backstabbing than most of the people. </p>
<p>I hope you can be happy with your decision, because I sure couldn’t.</p>