Chou played two seasons of college basketball for the Baylor Lady Bears before transferring to the UCLA Bruins.
[4] Chou continued training under Li, but also played on then-National Basketball Association (NBA) player Jason Terry's girl's Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team from sixth through ninth grade.
[13] Chou committed to attend Baylor University, where she and her high school rival, Lauren Cox, helped form one of the top recruiting classes in the country.
[9] She was named Big 12 Freshman of the Week for the period ending December 12, 2016, after scoring a season-high 15 points and making a career high five 3-pointers on six attempts against Texas State.
[17] On January 3, 2018, she matched her career-high of five 3-pointers after making all five of her first-half attempts en route to a game-high 17 points against Iowa State.
[23] Due to NCAA transfer rules, Chou sat out a season as a redshirt and served on the practice squad for the Bruins in 2018–19.
[24] On January 24, 2020, Chou made a season-high four 3-pointers and scored 18 points in career-high 33 minutes in an 85–80 overtime win over Washington.
[7] As a senior in 2020–21, Chou scored a career-high 28 points in a 92–67 win over Utah, breaking her previous personal best of 22 set with Baylor.
[30] Chou returned as a graduate student in 2021–22,[29] exercising the extra year of eligibility that the NCAA granted to athletes due to the pandemic.
[31][32] On December 5, 2021, she had career-highs of 31 points, 11 assists and six 3-pointers in a 112–33 win over San Jose State, earning her conference player of the week honors.
[51] During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Chou spoke out against the rise in animosity towards Asian Americans since the spread of the virus which originated in China.
[7][53] She felt safer going out wearing clothes with UCLA on it,[26][53] as she hoped to ease people's fears by showing that she was a basketball player and "not just a Chinese person [that others] need to stay away from.
She attributed the growing resentment towards Asian Americans to the use of the slang term Chinese virus, which she stated was "disrespectful and ultimately racist" and created "unnecessary xenophobia for people who look like me".
[26][53] Since 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended to not name infectious diseases after geographic locations due to the negative impact on countries, economies and people.