Coop Eligibility

Im a second year eng student and I was able to find a summer coop without any support of the student job portal and am wondering if I need to pay the 130+500 registration fee to the school to classify it as a coop officially. I would rather not pay over 600 for something I did all the work for if there would be no benefit that comes with it. For context, I did not even sign up for the job portal as I had heard it was useless. The job fits all the requirements to classify as a coop in my designation, and I do plan on finding a 16 month coop after 3rd year.